Christian poverty
in these times

HOW should one live and develop poverty these days?

It's well known that there is such a thing as Christian poverty. It's a virtue everybody is expected to live. It's not true that it has become obsolete nowadays.

This is the poverty lived and taught by Christ himself, echoed vigorously by the Catholic Church, and a real necessity to all of us.

In fact, I would say that many of our troubles today -- all the scandalous cases of injustice, inequality, corruption, consumerism, etc. -- are due to the unfortunate absence of this virtue.

Without this virtue, our daily human affairs, which inevitably involve the use of material things, can keep us away from God as well as hold us captive by the baser, if not animalistic, tendencies of our being.

This is when we can go not much farther than what our self-interest would dictate. We get blind to our duties toward others, and to our responsibility to orient all our temporal affairs to God.

We can say that the call of the times is for all of us to really know how to live and develop Christian poverty.

Christian virtue is not the state of having no possessions, or of living in destitution, though it can involve that. Poverty as a virtue is open to any situation, can adapt to anything, and is cheerful at the same time.

As Saint Paul said in his letter to the Philippians: "I have learned to be self-sufficing in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to live humbly and I know how to live in abundance. I have been schooled to every place and every condition." (4,11-12)

In short, one can be both a billionaire and at the same time living the virtue of poverty, if he knows how. Also, he can be as poor as a rat and at the same time feel at peace and secure, again if he knows how to live Christian poverty.

Christian poverty is more a matter of the heart, a matter of detachment, so that the heart can be freed of anything that can impede its total attachment to God alone.

Man is made for God alone, that's a basic principle. And echoing Saint Teresa of Avila, we are convinced that with God we have enough -- in fact, more than enough! All other things are just a bonus.

The problem is that we often forget these truths, or we take them for granted, or we consider them outdated, stuck in some religious thinking that has become quite foreign to the minds of many today.

This is a lamentable situation for which we have to find effective ways to handle. This becomes even more challenging because the effort to develop and live poverty has to contend with some confusing elements.

These confusing things mostly boil down to the need to blend the use material things, which we have to produce, develop and take care of, on the one hand, and on the other hand to being detached from them at the same time.

This is typical of our human condition. Since we are made of body and soul, a unity of two very dissimilar things, we have to learn to sustain that unity in the midst of an unavoidable tension.

For example, we have to learn to be both an individual person and a social being, to live in the material world without sacrificing our spiritual nature.

In the concrete case of poverty as a virtue, we have to learn how to have material things, in the sense that we need and use them and we also are asked to develop them, and yet be detached from them.

These material things in fact should be an instrument rather than a hindrance in our relationship with God. They should lead us to God, rather than take us away from him. They should help us pray, rather than make us forget God.

They too should serve as cement to keep all of us together in some organic unity where there is love and respect for one another.

But what do we see around? A lot of materialism and consumerism! That is, people using material things in a wanton way, forgetting God and forgetting others. They are simply using them for their own selfish ends and self-glorification.

The sad thing about this is that it seems these aberrations are becoming so entrenched in the environment that they appear to be part of our culture and mentality.

This is now the challenge we are facing -- how to remold our thinking and attitude such that our involvement in the material things can lead us to God and to others, rather than just keeping us to ourselves, busy serving our own selves.