Economics and Charisms/1 - Today marks the start of a new series on the economic-theological dimensions of religious communities, particularly monastic ones. A journey to discover the value of money and contracts in the spiritual life
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on May 31, 2026
The oldest text in vernacular Italian, the ‘Placito Capuano’ (circa 960), contains the name ‘Saint Benedict’: “Sao ko kelle terre, per kelle fini que ki contene, trenta anni le possette parte sancti Benedicti.” The manuscript refers to a dispute over the lands of the Monastery of Montecassino.
It is no coincidence that this contract mentions St. Benedict, because contracts and lands are an essential part of his charism, an expression of his ‘ora et labora’. In the West, Benedictine monasteries were among the first charismatic Christian communities, which, while on the one hand drawing on ancient traditions (think of the Essenes), on the other introduced important innovations linked to Christ and his Gospel. We must bear in mind—we will return to this—that when the word “charism” is used to describe the great monastic tradition, it takes on a meaning that is partly and significantly different from the same word (charism) used to refer to more recent movements and communities clearly linked to a charismatic founder. In the founding of monasteries, the “leader” was not, in fact, the founding abbot, but the Rule. Not depending on the personality of a charismatic founder is also a secret to the longevity of medieval European monasteries: a study by Swiss economist Bruno Frey and his colleagues on 134 monasteries in Northern Europe reported an average lifespan of about 600 years (The corporate governance of Benedictine abbeys, 2010).
That “labora,” therefore, is not merely a practical and contingent matter of communities composed of many people who had to work to live. No: work and the economy are part of the DNA of Christian charisms. Francis defined his charism in relation to money as well, but he wanted his friars to work, if possible; and even cloistered nuns have always worked and continue to do so, and when they stopped working—to consider themselves purely servants of the sacred—they entered into a profound crisis.
Let us, then, begin to explore some of the characteristics of the economy of charisms, exercises we will undertake over five Sundays (every two weeks), to reflect on wealth, real estate, governance, and the poverty of individuals and communities (including the meaning of the ‘vow’), to try to understand the challenges of the new realities of the Church and of our magnificent humanity.
The first point of departure is an obvious fact: there is a great deal of economics in the life of spiritual and charismatic communities. Monks and friars, through their practices and their thinking, were at the origin of the market economy itself, which thus arose from a Christian spirit; and today we should all ask ourselves—believers and non-believers alike—whether it will still be possible to work, do business, and produce without a “spirit”—AI can do many things for our economy, but it cannot give us the spirit.
Monasticism and Christian communities have learned the importance of the economy from the Old and New Testaments, which use economic language to speak of the Covenant and sacrifices to God; and when the discourse in the Bible becomes particularly solemn and significant, we find money and contracts. Consider Jeremiah’s purchase of the field of Anathoth (Jer 32), the contract between Abraham and the Hittites for the purchase of a tomb for his wife Sarah (Gen 23), or Judas’s thirty pieces of silver. Contracts and economics become the necessary language at life’s decisive moments, such as in the prophetic purchase of a field to declare, “We will return from exile,” and we will once again have work, children, and happiness; or to solemnize the burial of a wife, mother of the new people of the Covenant. In the Bible, moreover, some decisive callings take place while people are working. Elisha, Moses, Ruth, the first apostles. This is the great secularity of biblical faith, which holds such a grand and worthy vision of humanity that it enables people to converse with angels in the fields, in workshops, in shops.
We have lost this secularity, both within and outside the Church, within and outside Christian communities. Because we believe that the words and actions of the economy, of work, and of contracts are too human and ordinary to contain prophetic words and messages; and because we think that the only acts and words worthy of God must be those performed within the temple, during worship services and liturgies. And so we continue to speak of a God who is increasingly distant from people’s real lives, from the Gospel, and from the Bible.
Today, the life of Christian spiritual communities is under pressure in many areas, and some observers—attentive but perhaps cynical—have already proclaimed the end of the era of charisms in the Church.
This new crisis also manifests itself, and often primarily, in the economic and financial sphere, as a lack of money, bank credit lines, mortgages, or inactive or vacant properties that one would like to sell but cannot find buyers for (or buyers worthy of the history of the charism). Because the economy is the sign that reveals deeper crises: among young people, in vocations, in the sense of charism, in community life, in God, or in the meaning of being poor by choice in a world full of people who are poor not by choice. And faced with economic crises that are becoming increasingly difficult to understand and explain, given the complexity of the language, we end up either not wanting to look at them, or entrusting their management solely to the treasurer, or, worse, solely to external consultants who, with their invoices, certainly exacerbate the economic crisis, without any guarantee of a solution. Because this is not found on the economic-financial level, we know, we are learning; but, and this is the key point, sustainability cannot be found without looking at budgets and loans with attention, care, and respect. Ora et labora.
If the biblical God chose to reveal himself through the language of the economy and work, if the Word of God is also the language of contracts and money, then that same God continues to speak to us every day, using the language of economics and finance as well.
We must therefore learn to read financial statements as we read the Scriptures: they are not the same thing, but they have the same value, the same dignity, and the same spiritual meaning. There is a true “mysticism of the financial statement,” which we miss when we consider the economy a language too lowly, and relegate it to a technical field for accountants alone.
The language of numbers, accruals, and interest, on the other hand, lends seriousness and dignity to our discourse, to our mission, and to our charismatic credibility—even, and especially, when the numbers point to crisis and fragility. And when, for the most varied reasons (sale of real estate, income from investments…), the economy is functioning while everything else is struggling (vocations, evangelical and missionary life…), the ‘charismatic’ question regarding the economy becomes even more urgent. Because, in charisms, wealth is more problematic than poverty, in that it can act as a smokescreen, delude us, and prevent us from seeing the crises in other dimensions of the charism. An economy that is “doing poorly” must be taken very seriously, but an economy that is “doing well” must be taken even more seriously if it is not accompanied by the overall charismatic health of the community.
