Once upon a time there was a young man, fine-featured and outgoing, the wealthy son of a cloth merchant, who aspired to make a great reputation for himself as a soldier and who loved fine parties and uproarious living. He was intelligent and poetic, possessed of a wonderful singing voice, a natural leader – but unfortunately, often led his companions in drinking and carousing all night, spending outrageous amounts of his father’s money.
His father, Pietro was a successful and indulgent man who had high hopes of bringing his son into the family business. Any shenanigan could be tolerated as long as his son worked in their cloth business. But along the way a troubling thing began to happen. The young man began to show signs of not being interested in the family business. He began to visit sick people, and started giving money away to the poor.
He even began to go begging on the street to identify with the poor of the city. It was highly embarrassing to Pietro, one of the wealthiest men of the city. Finally, the young man pushed his father over the edge by selling some of the shop’s most expensive fabric, along with one of his father’s favorite horses, intending to give it to a nearby priest to distribute to the poor.
Pietro was furious when he found out about it. He grabbed his son gruffly by the collar and hauled him before the Bishop of the city, asking him to intervene with his son and bring him to his senses. So the young man and his father told the Bishop their stories. The Bishop sympathized with the young man’s zeal, but told him that he had sold his father’s property without permission and must return the money.
The young man considered the verdict carefully, and then slowly began removing his clothes. He placed all his clothes and the money from his sales at his father’s feet and stood there stark naked. In a strong voice, he called out, “I have called Pietro Bernadone my father….Now I will say Our Father who art in Heaven and not Pietro Bernardone.”
Quickly the bishop enfolded the naked young man in his robes, and called for his assistant to bring some old clothes that were to be given to the poor. Putting on the barest minimum to cover his nakedness, the young man walked out of the bishop’s palace and into the cold December day resolved to live a life of holy poverty, just as Jesus had done.
The young man is, of course, Francesco Benardone, known to us as St. Francis of Assisi. French scholar Ernest Renan, an agnostic, was so impressed with this follower of Christ that he wrote, “After Jesus, Francis of Assisi has been the only perfect Christian” (Quoted in Francis of Assisi, A Revolutionary Life., by Adrian House).
Indeed, Francis was determined to live out literally the advice Jesus gave to the Rich Young Ruler to sell all he owned, give to the poor and follow Jesus. It’s hard for us, living in the 21st century in the most affluent country the world has ever known to identify with this radical young man. We may have had fleeting thoughts of “leaving it all” and running away from modern life, but few of us have ever thought about what it would mean to literally walk away from all that we owned or held dear in order to follow Jesus. ...
Simply put, Francis had fallen in love with Lady Poverty. By this we understand that “this lady was symbolic of the poor Christ, of chastity, of valor and courage, of chivalry and virtue and everything spiritual and fine…To serve Lady Poverty was to be rich beyond imagining.”
Lady Poverty also symbolizes the paradoxes of the Gospel: richness in poverty, life in death, strength in weakness, beauty in the sordid and shabby, peace in conflict and temptation, fullness in emptiness and, above all, love in detachment and deprivation.” (Murray Bodo, Francis: The journey and the dream, pg. 11).
Now this is a radically different way of thinking from what most of us do most of the time. For us, wealth is comfort and security, a sign of God’s blessing and favor. At the extreme, being wealthy in our culture is even a defining characteristic of the Good person. No so with Francis. For him there were definite benefits associated with poverty. Franciscan author Ilia Delio, OSF lists a number of these benefits in her book “Franciscan Prayer”:
Poverty is the starting point of our attachment to God. The poor person is the one who finds himself or herself in need of God. To be poor is to depend upon God completely. Poverty challenges us to go beyond ourselves by taking from us everything upon which we might lean. It releases us from our self-concerns and helps us overcome our self-centeredness. Thus, we grow in the Spirit of God.
Poverty is the Key to spiritual Transformation. It frees us from depending upon things for our security and thus preserves freedom in our relationship with God. Jesus said: Blessed are the poor in spirit for they shall see God! Being poor and dependent is the basis of intimacy with God. Francis knew this to the utmost. He was so identified with Christ that he even received the stigmata, the signs of Christ’s wounds. Although he suffered greatly his life was beautiful and selfless. Thus we can say that true poverty releases divine beauty.
Here we need to insert a caveat. The poverty we are speaking of is Chosen. Simply being without money is of no use spiritually unless one chooses this consciously. Otherwise, being poor is simple suffering without benefit.
In terms of our relationships with others, poverty makes us Human. We are more alike in our needs than we are in our strengths. We need others to be fully human. (People, People who need people…). Without poverty of spirit, we separate ourselves from others and become puffed up with our own sense of pride and self-sufficiency. Because Poverty is the sister of Humility, we can accept the goodness of the other person, welcoming them as if they were Christ in person.
Finally, Chosen Poverty redresses injustices and inequalities.
A good example of this is in 2 Corinthians, chapter 8, in which Paul commends the people of Macedonia. He writes that “in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means…and beyond their means, of their own free will, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints.”
These folks had given out of their own poverty, and thus identified with the needs of others. This kind of giving builds community because it reminds us that we are all in this life together. And notice too, there is great joy in giving. Those who give freely are uniformly cheerful.
So if these blessings are indeed associated with Lady Poverty, how does one apply the lessons of poverty without walking off into the woods naked?
Applications of Poverty in “Secular Life”
Clement of Alexandria on Mark 10:21 says:
“It is not what some hastily assume, that Jesus commands him to throw away everything he owned and to abandon his property; rather, Jesus commanded him to banish from his soul his attitudes about property, his affinity for these things, his excessive desire, his terror and distress over these things, his anxieties (the thorns of life) that choke the seed of life. For it is neither great nor desirable to be generally without property, except for the sake of the word of life….” (Who is the Rich Man Who is Saved?)
The Goal is to be Sine Proprio: “Not without things, but without possessing things.”
An Illustration:
There was once a man who was very rich and was called to heaven. Because he was rich, he negotiated with God and finally God allowed him to bring one suitcase of his worldly treasure along with him. The man died and as he stood at the pearly gate, Saint Peter came to greet him. The man looked through the gate viewing the glitter of golden streets, and gems of perfection and such immense size that he was amazed. Peter saw the man and the suitcase and said, "This is strange. Nobody ever comes here with a suitcase. The man said, "I negotiated with God, and he said I could bring whatever of my wealth as would fit in one suitcase. Peter said, "I will check it out with God, but first let me see what is in the suitcase." The man opened the suitcase and Peter looked in. Inside the case were several bars of gold. Saint Peter said, "This is the wealth that you brought? You brought pavement!" …
Francis wrote a rule of life for those who wished to live a life of non-possessiveness. We know it as the Third Order Rule of St. Francis.
Here’s a brief excerpt form Chapter Six: “The Life of Poverty”.”21. All the sisters and brothers zealously follow the poverty and humility of Our Lord Jesus Christ. "Though rich" beyond measure (2 Co 8:9) He emptied Himself for our sake (Ph 2:7) and with the holy virgin, His mother, Mary, He chose poverty in this world. Let them be mindful that they should have only those goods of this world which, as the apostle says, "having something to eat and something to wear, with these we are content (1 Tim 6:8). Let them particularly beware of money. And let them be happy to live among the outcast and despised, among the poor, the weak, the sick, the unwanted, the oppressed, and the destitute.22. The truly poor in spirit, following the example of the Lord, live in this world as pilgrims and strangers (cf 1 P 2:1). They neither appropriate nor defend anything as their own. So excellent is this most high poverty that it makes us heirs and rulers of the kingdom of heaven. It makes us materially poor, but rich in virtue (cf Jm 2:5). Let this poverty alone be our portion because it leads to the land of the living (Ps 141:6). Clinging completely to it let us, for the sake of Our Lord Jesus Christ; never want anything else under heaven.”
So, we cultivate Poverty through our attitude of Non-possessiveness.
Finally, a word about our current birth pangs as a church: Jesus said that if we would heed his word and sell everything, that is, to put God first in all things, we would reap a reward in this life as well as the next. I believe that the Lord will help us to find and have all that we need to grow as a congregation.
We have stepped out in faith, walking away from all our familiar religious surroundings. For a little while, we will have to find various places to meet, but we can do it. Rick Warren did - for fifteen years before they actually built a church building! God will give us what we need in the way of a meeting place.
We are stepping up to the challenge of planting an orthodox Anglican congregation. It’s the equivalent of denying ourselves, and taking up our crosses. We are taking the Gospel into the world. We will only grow if we do so. This means sharing the Gospel with people who don’t know Christ and helping them experience transformation in Christ, that is discipleship.
Finally, if we are faithful to the first two challenges, we will step into the Promise of Intimacy with Christ and with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. We will experience a multiplication of reward beyond anything we thought we enjoyed before. There is something better up ahead and none of us knows exactly what it is, but Jesus promises it, and we believe it together.
So, I’d like to close now with a famous prayer that is attributed to St. Francis, but was probably written in the 1800’s by a priest in France. Listen to the Prayer of St. Francis:
Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is
hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where
there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where
there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where
there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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