This Week’s Meditation: On Necessities and Superfluities

This examen is straight from Fr. Dubay’s book Happy Are You Poor. He says that we all have different needs so we “cannot know whether a need is real or illusory” for certain people, but these set of questions are at least a good start. Some may think this is a bit too rigorous… but examens should be rigorous–or perhaps blunt and sincere.

• By what standards do I determine what is necessary?
• Do I collect unneeded things? Do I hoard possessions?
• May I, on Gospel principles, buy clothes at the dictates of fashion designers in Paris and New York? Am I slave to fashion? Do I live in other peoples’ minds? Why really do I have all the clothes I have: shirts, blouses, suits, dresses, shoes, gloves?
• Am I an inveterate nibbler? Do I eat because I am bored? Do the weight charts convict me of superfluity in eating and drinking? Do I take second helpings simply for the pleasure they afford?
• Do I keep unneeded books and papers and periodicals and notes?
• Do I retain two or three identical items (clocks, watches, scarves) of which I really need only one?
• Do I spend money on trinkets and unnecessary conveniences?
• In the winter, do we keep our thermostat, at a setting higher than health experts advise: 68 degrees?
• When I think of my needs, do I also think of the far more drastic needs of the teeming millions in the third world?
• Do I need the traveling I do more than the poor need food and clothing and medical care?
• Am I right in contributing to the billions of dollars spent each year on cosmetics? How much of this can be called necessary?
• Is smoking necessary for me?
• Is drinking necessary for me?
• Do I need to examine exactly what I mean by saying to myself, “I need this”?
• Can I honestly say that all I use or possess is used or possessed for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31)? Would he be given more glory by some other use?
• Do I in the pauline sense “mind the things above, not those on earth” (Col 3:1-2)?