To conquer anxiety does not mean eliminating our desires but, rather arranging them in a hierarchy, as our Lord reminded us when he said that life is more than the raiment. This pyramid of values places things at the bottom—and things including everything material in the universe, from a star that inspires a poet to wheat used for the baker’s bread. Above things comes man, and the peak of the pyramid is God. A religious man orders his life by the pattern of the pyramid. He overcomes anxiety by making all material things subject to the human, by disciplining the body until it is subject to the spirit, and by submitting the whole personality to God.
