Health and wealth are earmarks of success. Most people want both. Many people save their increasing wealth in order to spend it on their declining health. Wealth cannot keep us from death, but people have illusions that it will. We judge ourselves and others by worth and wellness.

On upcoming Sundays Saint Paul addresses these twin issues in excerpts from his Second Letter to the Corinthians (8:7, 9, 13-15; and 12:7-10). He writes what most people do not expect to hear. With regard to money, Paul says you should not keep it to yourselves. With regard to health, he says it only gets in the way of what is really important.

Paul is stumping for funds on behalf of Jerusalem Christians. Apparently the churches in Macedonia gave hugely to this effort, and Paul used their example to prick the consciences of wealthy Corinthian Christians. He compliments the Corinthians on their faith, discourse, knowledge and earnestness. But he thinks they should be known for something else as well: generosity to the poor.

The munificent Macedonians are not the only example Paul gives. He reminds the Corinthians about Jesus, who left his heavenly throne to become a lowly human being. "Though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich." Paul wants the Corinthians to be like that.

Paul wants economic equality. His goal was not to make everyone poor, but to get people to share the wealth. "Your abundance at the present time should supply their needs," he says. And it should work in reverse as well: "Their abundance may also supply your needs" one day.

Paul never recommends a tithe. He doesn't want people to compute 10 percent for the poor and pocket the rest. He wants them to keep giving until equality is established. By those standards, Americans should hang our heads in shame that we live in a world afflicted by abject poverty and hunger, while we decide which flavor ice cream we'd like for dessert and which sleep number for our beds.

To drive home the point, Paul quotes a line from the story of the Exodus. Trekking across the desert, the hungry Israelites got some relief from the miraculous appearance of manna. Each person gathered what he or she needed - nothing more, nothing less. "Whoever had much did not have more, and whoever had little did not have less" (Exodus 16:18). God provides plenty, as long as we are not so greedy or so parsimonious that some goes to waste.

God gives enough. That is also Paul's message about health. He should know. Paul apparently was not blessed with good health. In Galatians 4:13-15, he says it was because of a physical infirmity that he first announced the gospel. We know from other accounts of his conversion that he was blinded on the road to Damascus. He speaks about the goodwill of the first Christians he met: "You would have torn out your eyes and given them to me."

Physically, Paul was not much to look at. According to 2 Corinthians 10:10, people teased him: "His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible." Paul rejoined, "I may be untrained in speech, but not in knowledge" (2 Cor 11:6).

So what was this "thorn in the flesh" that afflicted Paul? No one knows. He compares it to an angel of Satan that beats him. Was it epilepsy? Migraines? Another eye disease? An abusive relative? We don't know. For a while, people thought it was a sexual temptation, a thorn "of the flesh" instead of a thorn "in the flesh." Whatever it was, Paul prayed three times for it to go away, and it never did.

So he lived with it. And he grew from it. He became content with weakness, insults and hardships. How did he do that? Paul was tempted, as all of us are, to think that we are strong when we are healthy. But it doesn't exactly work that way. When we are healthy, God is strong. It just seems as though we are. Periods of illness and more permanent disabilities reveal that God is strong even when we are not. Good health can get in the way of spiritual enlightenment.

If you succumb to society's opinion that your worth is measured by health and wealth, Paul wants you to think again. Your worth is measured by sharing your wealth and overcoming the illusion of health. God suffices.

Father Paul Turner is the pastor of St. Munchin Parish in Cameron.

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