Gospel Commentary: Possess Poverty

By Fr. Paul Scalia
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 7/10/03)

When our Lord first sends His Apostles into spiritual combat, He provides them with an essential weapon: nothing. "He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick - no food, no sack, no money in their belts." (Mk 6:8) Of course, this "nothing" is the evangelical counsel of poverty, the renunciation of possessions for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Our Lord places this at the center of the Apostles' mission, and therefore of the Church's life.

Poverty does not mean that we cannot own anything. The Church has explicitly rejected such thinking.  Most of the faithful exercise rightful ownership, for the good of their families, communities and the Church herself. At the same time, however, the allure of created goods can so dominate us that we become possessed by our own possessions. The constant concern about the body and the world — "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" (Mt 6:31) — distracts us from the soul and eternal life. For this reason men and women religious take a vow of poverty, freely choosing to own nothing except what their superiors provide, so that they will be freer to focus on the spiritual life. Their witness reminds us that detachment from created goods — simplicity of life — is obligatory for all the faithful.

This poverty, or detachment, is at the beginning of the spiritual life. We cannot take the first step in blessedness — that is, the first Beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in spirit" — without simplicity of life.  We cannot see our spiritual poverty unless we experience at least a little material poverty. Attachment to possessions also obscures the providence of God and damages our ability to trust Him. If we look to created goods to fulfill our every need, then we will never know or trust our heavenly Father, who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the grass of the field.

Poverty serves the moral life by cultivating the power necessary for all virtue: the ability to deny one's self.  Poverty is the first step to constraining the appetite. If a man never exercises self-denial as regards possessions, then how will he be able to deny his other, more dangerous, more powerful, appetites and passions? The ability to endure trials and suffering in pursuit of virtue begins with the ability to go without and do with less.

Parents should recognize the importance of cultivating poverty in the souls of their children. A child who gets whatever he wants quickly becomes a spoiled brat, and will eventually become a man enslaved to his own appetites. Parents have a good and noble instinct to provide for their children. They must beware, however, that providing their children with material goods may deprive them of the spiritual benefits of doing without.

What is true for each soul within the Church is also true for the Church herself.  Church history witnesses to the danger of riches and the power of poverty. Times of great corruption in the Church have invariably followed times of great wealth. And reforms rooted in poverty — the Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, etc. — have inevitably born great fruit.
"He instructed them to take nothing." Our Lord places in the hands of the Apostles not a weakness or a lack but a great weapon against the corrupting power of wealth. St. Dominic, the 12th century reformer, followed the Master's example. On his deathbed he left his disciples an inheritance of just two words: "Possess poverty." May we recognize the wisdom of this counsel and cultivate the nothingness that attains everything.

Fr. Scalia is parochial vicar at St. Patrick Parish, Chancellorsville.

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