Marcus Grodi heads back out to the farm to reflect upon finding true spiritual peace in a world full of confusing and conflicting messages.
With so many different people who all claim to be speaking for God, who can we trust? Marcus focuses in on what St. Paul says to St. Timothy about guarding the deposit of faith. Through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, Paul is reminding Timothy, and us, of the importance of holding fast to those teachings as a way to cultivate godliness, rather than being distracted by money, power, or our own ego. Those cannot bring contentment; only godliness can bring contentment.
And as Marcus points out, we know from the writings of people like St. Irenaeus of Lyons only a couple of generations later, that the early Church took that mission to guard the deposit of faith through Scripture and Tradition seriously.
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“Teach and urge these duties. If any one teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching which accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit, he knows nothing; he has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions, and wrangling among men who are depraved in mind and bereft of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. There is great gain in godliness with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world; but if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs.” I Timothy 6:2b-10
