We have to be careful when speaking about poverty. Whether we’re talking about priests, sisters, brothers, single or married people there are two expressions of poverty.
First, the person has no right to own anything. This is material poverty. This is the kind of poverty that is included in the vow of poverty that religious make. We don’t have a right to own anything. Therefore, anything that we have for our use is not our property. It is the property of the community, the miinistry, the diocese or the universal Church. But no where does is there a title with my name on it.
When I am transferred from one house to another the only thing that I can take with me are literally: my breviary, bible, notebooks, habits, clothing and toiletries. Everything else stays behind for the next friar who comes to live there. The computer that I’m using right now will remain here when I leave. Some of our houses don’t have a computer. Some have a computer, but no internet. In some religious communities, religious ARE ALLOWED to keep a little more than this. But notice the key word is ALLOWED. They don’t have a right. It is something that the constitutions grant them and which these same constitutions, if they were changed tomorrow, can take away or reduce these privileges. Once upon a time, we were allowed to have personal books in my community. Wtih the reform to return to the Franciscan roots, that is no longer the case. All books belong to the house where we live. They remain there when we leave. The same goes for furniture and electronic gadgets: TV, radio, computer and so forth. Even the cell phone belongs to the local house or to the ministry.
Second, there is the virtue of detachment. If you want to read and understand it in its most profound sense I suggest that you read Francis of Assisi and Teresa of Avila. I did my doctoral dissertation on the contemplative and apostolic interaction between Teresian and Franciscan detachment. Detachment has often been described as poverty of spirit.
When I was writing my dissertation I found a problem with this term. The original nuance has been lost. It was originally meant as a spirit of poverty in which one removes all attachments to property (things), places, and people that get in the way of fulfilling the perfection of charity, which can only be fulfilled through either an apostolic life that leads one into contemplation or a contemplative live that drives one to action. That’s why we see Francis moving from the very active life in his early years to becoming a hermit by the end of his life, whereas we see Teresa moving from contemplation to reforming the Carmelite Order (action). This does not mean that contemplation and action cannot co-exist. But that’s not the topic for this thread.
In either case, what they both teach us is the great truth that is found in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” One who gives up everything that stands between him and heaven is poor, but he does not get heaven because he is poor. He gets heaven because there are no barriers between him and heaven.
In this sense, whether one makes a vow of poverty, as do religious or whether one is a secular person: deacon, priest, bishop, married, or single. We are all called to remove the barriers between us and heaven. These can be possessions, people, places, ideas, worldview, wishes and aspirations, feelings and emotions, memories and even our history. We set aside any attachment that does not allow us to see God as Teresa saw him and that does not allow us to imitate Christ as Francis did. This is why Teresa and Francis together are wonderful teachers about the true meaning of poverty and its final purpose: to contemplate God and to serve him whom we contemplate.
This is a universal call, not just for members of religious orders or congregations. And it’s not an easy call to respond to. It requires discipline and asceticism. Secular priests, married men and women, secular deacons and bishops are all called to detach from anything, any place, any way of thinking and any person that stands between them and God.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
