Today’s first reading is a brief but stunning indication of one way the early disciples were transformed by the experience of the risen Christ. “Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need.”

It may not be possible today to hold everything in common. Yet the Church teaches that property we do hold is not ours to dispose of however we wish, but is under what Pope John Paul II in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis called a “social mortgage.” Speaking in Laborem Exercens of “the right to ownership or property,” he had explained, “Christian tradition has never upheld this right as absolute and untouchable. On the contrary, it has always understood this right within the broader context of the right common to all to use the goods of the whole of creation: the right to private property is subordinated to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone.” This reminder that all our property is a gift of God mortgaged to the common good is timely in an era when we are too often tempted to say in our hearts, “It is my own power and the strength of my own hand that has got me this wealth.”

 

 

 

 

 

 Clayton Sinyai is a trade union activist and the author of Schools of Democracy: A Political History of the American Labor Movement (Cornell, 2006). He is a member of the Catholic Labor Network, the American affiliate of the World Movement of Christian Workers. He can be reached at clayton@catholiclabor.org.