The story of Melania Trump is a rags-to-riches tale. A young woman of modest means from an industrial town in Slovenia becomes a wealthy model and ends up living with you-know-who in the Mar-a-Lago mansion.
Today’s story concerns another Melania in a riches-to-rags story. Melania the Younger (383-437) was born into an aristocratic family and was named for her grandmother, Melania the Elder. Her family was extraordinarily wealthy, perhaps the richest in the Roman Empire. Melania was forced at age fourteen to marry her seventeen-year-old cousin Valerius to preserve wealth in the family. The couple had two children, both of whom died young. Melania didn’t aspire to live a pampered life. She wanted to give it all away and live for Christ, convincing Valerius to do the same. It wasn’t easy in those days to rid themselves of so much money. Their home in Rome was so expensive that no one could afford to live there. They not only owned luxurious estates, but whole towns and villages. Do you catch the irony here? Melania and Valerius relinquished wealth that so many others sought to collect and treasure. They put their money to work by building orphanages, churches, and hospitals. They fed the poor and freed eight thousand slaves. She worked with Augustine to establish monasteries and convents to preserve the church from secular corruption. Though she’s honored in the Catholic church as a saint, she had little use for people who sought to venerate her generosity.
Her prayer offered here, spoken shortly before her death, challenges us to pray for true wealth: