Parable and Conscience Meditation December 7

Poverty  December 7

Food and clothing shall be distributed to each of you by your superior, not equally to all, for all do not enjoy equal health, but rather according to each one’s need (Rule of St. Augustine 4).

His undisciplined youth, his experience of human instability and his struggle for personal integrity down through the years gave St. Augustine sympathy for others’ weaknesses.  How many times did he have to fight for moral mastery over himself?  He also suffered from frail health and knew the limits of physical strength.  It is hardly surprising that in his Rule there is a certain moderation and discretion when it comes to asceticism.  Augustine always invites others to the summit of the ideal of poverty, without ignoring the personal and social handicaps that hinder a fast climb.  Throughout his Rule, he makes temporary concessions in favor of confreres who are spoiled and delicate, weak and sick.  He nods to the human condition of each one while encouraging each to arrive at the spiritual goal of complete union with God.  Like the Suffering Servant of God, “he does not break the crushed reed, nor snuff the faltering wick. Faithfully he presents fair judgment.” (Is. 42,3). 

If you don’t live in this house, you can’t know what insects bite here.  (Bakongo)

Parable and Conscience Meditation December 6

Poverty  December 6

(The vow of poverty) makes us more free and available for love of God and solidarity with our neighbor (Congolese Regional Statutes, Intro. 1.16).

Our religious life gives special witness to the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus.  In Jesus Risen, one sees the whole rationale for a commitment to the vows.  He is the revelation of an abundant life, a filled-up heart, a happy destiny already achieved.  He inspires self-abandonment in the complete confidence that no one loses anything valuable in following him.  Quite the contrary, neglecting him means compromising, in the end, real happiness.  His death symbolizes victory over all the limits of human existence and over all the fears connected with them.  This is the faith that supports a life of Gospel poverty.  Where the human heart fears the loss of all security, the Resurrection reveals a Providence faithfully caring for those who seek first the Kingdom of God.  The Resurrection calms the frantic search for an assured life.  Responding to this mystery by their poverty, religious, like people already risen, can heroically live a style of life without worry about their material well-being.  They leave behind concern for the goods of a world that is passing away and accept Christ as their real treasure.  This is not a question of denying basic human needs.  Living in this way as religious directs others’ attention to where they should go with confidence to satisfy those needs abundantly.

The hen doesn’t have milk, but she feeds her chicks with the warmth of her body.  (Tanzania)

Parable and Conscience Meditation December 5

Poverty  December 5

This vow obliges us to relativize our desire to own and dispose of things according to our own taste (Congolese Regional Statutes, Intro. 1.16).

In his commentary on Psalm 51, Augustine asks, “What advantage is it to present oneself with empty hands if the heart is full of desire for things?”  For him the asceticism of the vow of poverty includes this double commitment:  empty hands, empty heart.  A person enters religious life emptying his or her hands, i.e., renouncing personal property and putting it at the disposal of the community.   One empties him/herself of material goods, human resources, personal whims.  But presenting oneself with empty hands does not satisfy the evangelical requirement.  One must also empty the heart of desire for possessions.  The religious must always assume a posture that favors the emptying of the heart.  The journey from empty hands to empty heart in religious life is progressive and challenging, but it’s necessary to arrive so as to verify the integrity of one’s religious profession.  There must be a constant discipline to live soberly so as to eventually live as simply as possible.  To live in such a way is to have the advantage promised by the Gospel.

It’s not the hand that gives, but the heart.  (Tanzania)

Parable and Conscience Meditation December 4

Poverty  December 4

The call to evangelical poverty invites us to enter into solidarity with the poor and needy, to whom Christ’s concern was particularly directed (Const.12.2).

I profess religious poverty before the Church and the world.  Full of youthful fervor, inspired by numberless saints in Church history, wanting to closely follow Christ, I pronounce the words.  And, immediately, the way opens before me.  But it does not simply lead me to a confidant human security in the midst of a caring religious community.  The real road passes by community security, but it does not end there. The vow pushes me out of this nest.  It asks of me, in Jesus’ name, to change my place in society to be alongside those who struggle for the necessities of life, who are uneducated, who are always threatened by illness, who do not easily master their feelings, who are socially and morally marginalized, who feel distant from God.  Did I expect such travelling companions?  Did I envision this to be the following of Christ by the profession of poverty?  Fortunately, I started with lots of fervor, inspiration, determination!  And if I find myself powerless in the face of the magnitude of the sufferings of these ravaged brothers and sisters, the “something new” that I want for them as I displace myself is that they have, at the very least, the hope of a final liberation in Christ.

Don’t be like corn hairs that live close to one another but don't help braid one another’s hairs.  (Madagascar)

Parable and Conscience Meditation December 3

Poverty  December 3

We respond to evangelical poverty when we truly give preference to the other person in all the opportunities offered by our way of life, realizing that we are given to one another as brothers and sisters by the one Father of all (Const.12.1).

He left his house that morning, well supplied for the business of the day.  A serious man, he took off toward his destination.  Suddenly, he was confronted with an unfortunate person on the way.  It was an unexpected interruption, an inconvenient call.  But what unfortunate person?  An enemy from the point of view of religion and social life, someone he ridiculed, isolated, condemned before God.  And here was such a person now in the ditch, wounded, a situation this traveler would consider justified.  One can imagine the feelings that welled up in his heart.  One can imagine the conflict in his mind.  What to do?  He brought his donkey to a halt.  His compassion overcame his resentment.  Using time he had programmed for something else, he dug down into his saddlebags.  There were the wine and the oil, intended for another purpose, now become medicine.  He dug deeper.  There was the money budgeted for another need, now become payment for medical aid.  And this man, who had begun the day as a simple Samaritan, ended it by becoming the Good Samaritan for all time.  Letting himself be bothered, stopping and digging down into his saddlebags made all the difference.

The eye cries and the nose runs.  (Ethiopia)

Parable and Conscience Meditation December 2

Poverty  December 2

Call nothing your own, but let everything be yours in common (Rule of St. Augustine, 4).

It is said that before each important homily he was to preach, St. Augustine asked a deacon to read this text from the Acts of the Apostles:  “There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need” (4:34-35).  But even more effectively, Augustine proclaimed these words by his personal, daily life-style and that of his community of Hippo.  For forty years, this Christian-become-bishop remained faithful to the ideal of evangelical poverty, symbolized by the primitive community of Jerusalem.  It was the cornerstone of his personal spirituality and of the Rule he wrote for his friends in the community.  It was his own path:  never any personal property, always everything in common.  He was content to live from the reserves of the community, to which he himself contributed.  Contrary to the custom of his time, he even refused to write a will before his death:  nothing possessed during his life, nothing to leave after his death.  He wanted to be a preacher transparent to the end.  He died as he lived.

A man with two families dies of hunger; the one wife thinks the other is preparing the meals.  (African proverb)

Parable and Conscience Meditation December 1

Poverty  December 1

To be poor in the sense of the Gospel is to base our existence on the life of others and no longer to root our concern in ourselves (Const. 12.1).

Listen to Jesus.  “Happy are those who are poor in spirit (Mt. 5:3).”  They have nothing and they know it.  They can’t count on anything and they accept it.  They are totally insignificant and they live out their lives like that.  They are powerless and they stay calm.  How is it possible to call such people “happy”?  The definition of happiness seems completely different:  to have more than is necessary, to be assured of personal security, to be recognized, to live free of limitation.  If there is any logic to support calling the poor in spirit happy it’s a logic that comes from another world, not ours.  And it’s true.  They are happy because there is room in their lives for God who transcends this world.  The observance of the vow of poverty is based on a profoundly evangelical conviction, namely, that Jesus, by his Resurrection, is the bearer of ultimate security.  He is the guarantor of all human aspirations, even earthly ones.  Grounded in that conviction, the Christian can let go of the anxieties of his life, which is passing away.  The love of God in Christ calms the profoundest of human fears.  Assured of all, the religious is free to be concerned with others’ needs.

If the chimpanzee agrees to fight, it is because he counts on the help of the gorilla.  (Mongo)