Christian poverty today

WE need to revisit the true spirit of Christian poverty. With all the mess we are suffering now—the screaming pork barrel scandal, the wave of materialism and consumerism, vanity, greed and envy on the one hand, and the severe inequality and injustice we see around, on the other—it’s time, it’s urgent indeed to recover and live more faithfully this spirit of  Christian poverty.

            It’s actually a very beautiful virtue, very positive and constructive. It enhances our humanity, in both our personal and social dimensions, helping us to clean our heart and vision so that we can only get engaged with what is proper to us, and that is, God.

            It puts our attitude toward material and earthly things—from money to power and fame—in its proper bearing. With it, we are reminded that we are not absolute owners of what we have and what we use, but are stewards who have to use them fruitfully in the name of God for God’s glory and for the good of all.

          In other words, we have the responsibility to use things properly. Christian poverty is not a matter of not having things, though we also have to be ready when things that we need or we want are not available. 

            Christian poverty is more a matter of detachment, of seeing to it that our heart is not held hostage by the things of this world, that its intention is only to love God and to serve others. We need to tickle, arouse and spring to action this kind of attitude.

            Christian poverty is not averse to having things as long as we are aware of our condition as stewards towards those things. Thus, it is not averse to the idea of one becoming a millionaire or a billionaire or a trillionaire, though obviously when one has more things, he also has the greater responsibility to rectify and purify his intention.

            Out of this spirit of Christian poverty, we have to learn how to account before God and before everybody else all the earthly goods—money, power and fame, etc.—that we use or enjoy. We need to attain that Christian goal of not having more nor less than we need, and that those who have a lot would not have anything in excess, nor those who have little would have anything less than what they need.

            This practice of accounting will help us avoid getting swallowed up by the many deceiving and tricky allurements of this world. The world is full of irresistible gimmicks, attractive snares and fantasy bubbles. So we really have to live out as best as we could what Christ said about being shrewd as serpents while being simple as doves.

            Yes, we need to be really discerning without falling into skepticism and cynicism. There’s always hope in spite of the very ugly cases of abuses in the handling of money and the use of other earthly goods.

            We need to see to it that our use of money and earthly goods does not undermine our love for God and for souls. The ideal situation should be that the more money and things we have, the more love we ought to have toward God and others. The more gifts, blessings and privileges we have, the more responsibility we also have.

            Let’s always remember what St. Paul once said: “The love of money is the root of all evils.” (1 Tim 6,10) Our use of money should not be a result of mere love for it. Our use of money has to come from love of God and others in order to generate more love around. We need to have mechanisms to check if indeed we observe this law.

            We need to make this ideal into a living, breathing reality. We have to overcome a common bias that this business of Christian poverty is only a religious concern that has nothing to do with the practical realities of life.

            We need to explode that myth for it simply does not correspond to the truth about ourselves. Even without inputting yet the pertinent doctrine of our faith, our common sense alone, our sense of being decent human beings alone will tell us that we have to live poverty, understood as detachment from things to be able to serve the common good.

            Christian poverty allows us to grow in love and goodness in each one of us and in our relation with others through the use of money and earthly things. Love and goodness are our ticket to heaven. Money and the others, we will leave behind.

Our ultimate source of life

DO we know our ultimate fount of life? Are we aware of our responsibility toward this ultimate and abiding source of our life? Do we even care to ask these questions?

            We have to ask these questions, since for all their extreme importance and relevance to our life, they continue to be ignored and even ridiculed.

            It’s part of the secularized mentality that has dominated in practically all parts of the world to refrain from asking these questions. With that mind-frame, it seems it’s enough to realize that we are alive physically, economically, professionally, socially, politically, etc. Why go any further?

            It’s a mentality that gives blinding importance and restrictive attention to the here and now, to the physical and material, the mundane and natural, while bypassing the eternal, spiritual and supernatural dimension of our life.

            We seem to refuse to acknowledge that there is still a more original source of our life that actually serves as the foundation, root and heart of all the other aspects we have in our life.

            And this ultimate fount of our life can be no other than God, who is our Creator, and more than a Creator, he is our Father. As Creator, he does not only bring us to existence and leave us to be on our own. He is always with us, for he is the very core of our existence. He cannot withdraw from us, since withdrawing is like taking away our existence, is like reverting us to nothing.

            As Father, he is with us and in us through love, a love that knows no bounds, such that even if we go against him, he will do everything to bring us back to him, even to the point of becoming man and saving us by assuming all our sins and faults through death and then to resurrect later on.

            We have to arrive at the abiding awareness that more than needing food, money, social acceptance, etc., we need God first, last and always. And for this to happen, we have to sharpen our spiritual faculties such that they become the leading elements in our life, rather than the things of the flesh and the world.

            “It is the spirit that quickens (that is, that gives life). The flesh profits nothing,” Christ himself said (Jn 6,63) And he also told us to watch and pray, that is, to engage ourselves through our spiritual faculties with God, because “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mt 26,41)

            There is indeed a great need for us to be very spiritually alive and vibrant, which does not mean that we pay little attention to the needs and workings of the flesh and of the world. We have to be as spiritually healthy as possible, because it is our spirit, our soul, that gives life, meaning and direction to all the other aspects of our life.

            This is a basic truth about ourselves that we need to understand very well. It’s a truth that may not be immediately felt by us, like a baby who does not understand yet many important things precisely because he is still a baby, but we need to realize it as we grow toward maturity.

            Our problem is that, like some people who grow improperly and are entangled with their childish or adolescent and unstable ways, we also tend to get snared and trapped in the immediate, bodily, material and temporal aspects of our life. We fail to go all the way with respect to the over-all human nature and dignity.

            Many reasons can explain why that is so. We can be dominated by laziness, or by an excessive love for comfort and easy life, and by some vices that blind us from seeing beyond the here and now and desensitize us to the spiritual nature of our life and the supernatural goal that our life cannot help but be oriented.

            That is why we need to go through a process of purification and conversion, and a continuing need for renewal. That’s because there is need for us to go from the carnal and worldly man to the spiritual man, from the old man to the new man.

            The ideal is that we are conscious that we are generating and maintaining our life, nourishing it and making it grow through a vital union with God, that our life is not just dependent on the food we eat, the money we earn, the work we do, the fame we enjoy, etc. Our life has to develop with God as the animating principle and end.

Studying God’s word

THIS is actually everybody’s responsibility and task. It’s not only for priests and nuns, or some people with leanings toward a vibrant spiritual life. Those who are in the middle of the world doing all sorts of things like business, politics, etc., have great need for God’s word.

            Reading, meditating and living God’s word is for all, mainly because God’s word is what gives us real life, and not just biological life, nor social or professional life, cultural or political life, etc.

             As one liturgical prayer puts it, God’s word is “the food of our salvation and the fountain of life.” It is the bringer of grace, the ultimate source of our life, the very essence of our dignity as persons and children of God. It is what brings us to eternal life, what gives us proper direction and meaning to everything in life.

            Even more, the Letter to the Hebrews gives us a wonderful insight into God’s word, especially insofar as one’s personal spiritual life is concerned. It’s a description that is worth our time and effort in digesting it.

            God’s word, it says, “is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword, and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intent of the heart.” (4,12)

            St. Jerome also has a good insight about God’s word as found in the Scripture. He said, “ignorance of the Scripture is ignorance of Christ,” basing that claim on what Christ himself said: “Search the Scriptures…they give testimony of me.” (Jn 5,39)

            We always have recourse to some word to animate our spirit and prime us to action. Thus, we have words derived from the sciences and the arts, and from our cumulative experiences in the different fields and levels in life that spring us to activity.

            We just have to make sure that we avail ourselves of the ultimate word, and not just some intermediate one that would have no foundation unless engaged with the ultimate, which is God’s word.

            We need to outgrow a certain bias, unfortunately quite common, that considers God’s word as meant only for a few people, or that deems it as one more among many other words which we may feel free to choose or not, or that it is just as good as the others.

            It’s not we are not free to choose God’s word, or that we are forced to have recourse to it. This is a no-no in us. This is unacceptable. We have to freely choose it, convinced that it is necessary for us.

            We just have to realize though that there is a certain point in life where freedom and necessity actually meet and share the same ground, like when we are free to eat or not, and yet we choose to eat because it is necessary. That’s just how the cookie crumbles, how our nature is.

            God is absolutely necessary to us, since he is the very foundation of our existence and also the very purpose of it, though we may not realize this truth fully. We just have to freely go to him, because God actually does not force us to come to him, though he does everything to draw us to him.

            It’s important that we get to know God through his word that has been revealed to us, so we can learn to love and serve him as we ought. And God’s word is now recorded in the Scriptures that go together with Tradition and the Church’s magisterium which has the proper authority to keep and teach it.

            We have to be wary of the tendency to have a very personalized, and often individualistic and reductive attitude toward God’s word. God’s word as recorded in the Scripture has to be studied within the context of the over-all teaching of the Church.

            Yes, we need to study it thoroughly, understanding by study as not simply a matter of an intellectual operation but also as an expression of faith and trust in God. We need to believe first before we get to understand it. And the succeeding acts of understanding it increases and reinforces our belief as well.

            Studying God’s word should therefore be a form of prayer. Such attitude does not compromise the intellectual rigidity that we should apply when we study God’s word. Rather, it facilitates and enhances the intellectual dimension of such study. It makes study go beyond the intellectual level to enter into the full range of our necessities.