Economy and Charisms/2 - What happens when communities and movements grow in wealth and property? There is a risk that the means will become the end. And the humility that is the foundation of biblical and evangelical humanism will be lost. It is the “Solomon Syndrome”
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on 06/14/2026
Biblical and evangelical humanism is centered on smallness. Abel, David, Ruth, the still, small voice, Nazareth, Mary, the little flock, the mustard seed, the Samaritan woman, the five loaves and two fish of the boy from Galilee. The Kingdom of Heaven is a strip of land belonging to the poor, the persecuted, the peacemakers, the meek; and anyone who has encountered people belonging to these categories in life knows that they share smallness, which is a combination of poverty, humility, simplicity, and above all a gentle acceptance of life, of others, and of the spirit.
If we look at the history of communities, movements, and charisms, we realize that at the beginning everything speaks only of simplicity, of essentiality, of smallness. There was “only one voice,” a few people called by name, and the sensation of being infinitely small yet capable of dialoguing with the infinite, of breathing the eternal. That smallness attracts, converts, and wins people over, because everything speaks only of gratuitousness, purity, and spiritual candor—qualities against which it is impossible to resist. And so the community grows and expands; in some cases, the growth can be truly astounding. Those who in life have received the gift of participating in the birth of a charismatic experience have lived one of the rarest and most extraordinary realities on earth.
This great and rapid growth is expressed first and foremost in the number of people who join because they identify deeply with that community, feeling it to be an essential part of their very existence in the world. Soon, donations follow—houses, land, money, inheritances, and benefactors who sincerely give their possessions, sometimes in great abundance, convinced they are serving the noblest of causes. These dynamics also lie at the origin of the real estate assets of many monasteries and convents, although in the past they took on different anthropological and social dimensions.
This multifaceted growth is initially perceived as a strong sign of blessing. The assets are accepted to “give glory to God,” and no one doubts that these newly acquired riches could taint the spiritual beauty of the community and its charism; also because, at the very beginning, the donations are directly functional to the mission: the houses and money are needed; they are not accumulated but used for concrete needs. One therefore remains poor, even amidst many possessions.
At a certain point, however, generally a few decades after the foundation (or refoundation), new problems related to this wealth emerge. The first depends on a specific effect of ‘intertemporal lag’. As the years pass, the fruits and providence of today stem from the life of yesterday. That is, there is a ‘temporal gap’ between life and its fruits, something similar to what happens with the stars in the firmament: some have already died, but because they are thousands of light-years away from us, they still appear to shine, as if they were alive. Thus, while in the early days today’s goods and donations arrive for today’s life—and are therefore put at the service of the mission—in the following decades the goods may continue to arrive even though community life has begun to lose its evangelical luster and prophetic character. This temporally “out-of-sync” providence is confusing, because those in charge interpret it as “approval” from Above of the community’s present state, and underestimate that the fruits come from the light of yesterday’s stars. Thus, instead of engaging in deep discernment regarding the reasons for the decline of charismatic life, we deceive and delude ourselves because ‘providence continues to arrive’—and the crisis deepens, precisely ‘thanks’ to the assets that have now become a (dwindling) income from yesterday’s life, no longer an income earned today.
There is, then, a second phenomenon, even more complex and dangerous, because it often leads to the extinction of communities.
A day comes when wealth and grandeur give rise to a new way of thinking: that grandeur and abundant fruits are in themselves a means of apostolate and mission. While at first one shunned any pursuit of success and visibility (including media attention), over time some (not infrequently those in charge) begin instead to think that since those many assets are a divine blessing, it is good to display and increase them to enhance the credibility, strength, leadership, and mission of the charism. And so, not only are donations and provisions (sometimes of dubious ethics) not refused, but every effort is made to increase them, convinced—perhaps in good faith—that such wealth gives “glory to God.” When this notion of greatness as a means of apostolate becomes dominant, the day of the beginning of decline arrives without fail, and it becomes swift and unstoppable. The smallness of the Gospel is forgotten; one drifts away from the dust of the road, and day by day one finds oneself with something very, far too different from the origin.
In reality, there are signs to be interpreted. The first consists in the leaders’ refusal to see the data pointing to crisis and decline, which are hidden or denied, along with criticism and dissenting voices. Another unmistakable sign is the disregard for “low-impact activities”—that is, those that don’t make a splash in the media, public opinion, or among leaders—“why spend two hours with this person when I could be posting or writing an article during that time?” Thus, those actions (and those people) who continue to “waste time” listening to others are devalued—those hidden activities that no one sees and, above all, that no one talks about (to the point of even including prayer)—and all effort is focused on the impact of leaders. Forgetting, among other things, that those “low-impact” relational activities were precisely what had given birth to and spread the community, what had attracted the wealth and benefactors of today. Furthermore, once the community has become “large,” it no longer attracts genuine vocations and selects the wrong ones, giving rise to a fatal pincer effect.
These indicators of decline are ‘weak signals’ and operate below the surface, so they are not easily detectable—partly because they emerge at the peak of the community’s development (in terms of numbers, economy, visibility…)—it is the so-called ‘sunset at noon’ syndrome—and anyone who points them out is immediately silenced as a discordant pessimist and defeatist.
The Bible is familiar with these syndromes.
In his youth, Solomon had been the wisest and most knowledgeable king. Thanks in part to his talents, his wealth and his kingdom grew greatly; the Ark of the Covenant became too small to contain ‘the glory of God’. And so he first built the great temple, and then his palace, twice the size of the temple. He ended up losing his wisdom, and when he was old he followed “other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord” (1 Kings 11:4). Solomon lost his way; that great wealth generated by his charisma one day became his curse. He did not understand that he should have simply dismantled the palace, then the temple, and returned to the bare, poor voice. Because once we have become rich and great, it is impossible to become small again, unless something decisive comes from outside: a great crisis, a death that prepares a possible resurrection, which can reach us if a ‘faithful remnant,’ if at least one person, has continued to remain small, to wait, to hope, to believe, to pray.
2/continued