St John Chyrsostom - Who is rich and who is poor?

     Today, we celebrate Thanksgiving, and we have much for which we give thanks.  However, there is also a big discussion in our country about the rich and the poor.  Who has access to health care?  Who is eligible for food stamps?  Who can afford to go to college, or to pay rent for a nice apartment or afford to buy a car?  The gap between the wealthiest in the country and the rest of the population is getting bigger and bigger.  The average income of the top 1% in our country, which is more than $1.1 million in income per year, is more than 25 times what the average that rest of the 99% of the population earns - about $45,500 per year.   In some cities in California, rent for the average apartment is more than $3,500 per month.  How can a working class person afford that?  
     In the discussion of who is rich and who is poor, I came across these thoughts of St John Chrysostom, one of our important Early Church Fathers and a Doctor of the Church. He looks at who is rich and who is poor in a different way through the lens of our faith.   It gave me a lot to reflect upon.   According to a homily given by Early Church Father St John Chrystostom, the rich man is not the one who has collected many possessions, but rather the one who needs no possessions.  The poor man is not the one who has no possessions, but the one who has many desires.  If we see someone who is greedy for many things, we should consider him the poorest of all, even if he has acquired a great deal of money.  Yet, if we see someone with few needs, we should count him the richest of all, even if he has acquired no material possessions at all.  Just as we would not not call a person healthy who was always thirsty, even if he enjoyed abundance and lived by rivers and springs, the same standard should be given in the way we perceive someone as wealthy. Some is not healthy if they are always desiring someone else’s property. If one cannot control his own greed, even if he has wealth in extreme abundance, how can he ever be perceived as affluent?  According to St John Chrysostom, those who are satisfied with what they have, who are please with their own possessions, even if they are the poorest of all by the material standards of our secular world, they are really the richest of all by the lens of faith.  Don’t these views of St John Chrysostom give us a lot to ponder?