What is your price? We hear this so often spoken in the movies; money buys everything and everyone; nobody resists the Mammon. People who go to the point of selling their honour, their dignity and the truth, do so, on the hope that money will buy them everything that is essential for self-fulfillment and happiness. The truth though is that money, far from buying everything, cannot even buy what we really need in life. For this reason it is not difficult to find people who are depressed and unhappy among the rich, and people who are happy and self-fulfilled among the poor.
Money can buy a bed, but not sleep; it can buy food, but not appetite; it can buy books, but not intelligence; it can buy luxury, but not beauty; it can buy a house, but not a home; medicine but not health; social gatherings but not love; toys or amusements but not happiness; a cross but not faith; an expensive plot in the cemetery, but not a place in heaven. There is nothing more valuable than life and life is a gift from God; love, which is the source of life, is free and cannot be bought or sold. In conclusion, money only buys the material goods that are essential to stay alive; but has nothing to do with what life really is; in fact, life is not a commodity that can be bought, sold, or owned.
Princess Diana of Wales had everything that a young woman could ask for in life: youth, beauty, power, money, fame, blue blood and two precious sons. Nevertheless she was not happy because she lacked the most important thing which is love, and money can't buy it. To look for love, she abandoned everything and it was in that search that she lost her life. There are others who having the essential, which is love, do the opposite, spending their lives busily searching for everything that the princess had and despised, and in so doing they end up losing what is the most important, love which they already had and took for granted.
Like Diana of Wales, St. Benedict of Nursia, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis of Xavier, St. Anthony of Lisbon, St. Isabel of Portugal, Nuno Alvares Pereira, Beatriz da Silva etc., the saints of the Catholic Church, for the most part, were from the upper-middle class, educated, young, handsome and beautiful, rich and some from nobilities. They, however, abandoned everything for Christ, as St. Paul had done, "I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." (Phil. 3:8)
The Worth and the Worthlessness of Poverty
The poverty exalted in the Bible is not the kind that prevents human beings to sustain their lives and live with dignity. From the beginning, the Sacred Scripture presents us with a God who, far from being neutral or impartial, fights against this type of poverty. In fact, God is on the side of the poor against the rich, as seen in the Canticle of Mary (Luke 1:53). Rejoice in the fall of the rich as such, but not in the fall of men. God wants conversion of the sinners not their death. God is probably the only one who differentiates between sinners and their sins, condemning the sin, saving the sinner.
As religious, monks, friars and nuns, our vow of poverty arises from the beatitudes that Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel of Matthew: the choice of poverty (Mt. 5:3). This choice although inspired by the freedom from attachment to money, which can dominate the heart, is also motivated by the wish to be witnesses of God's love for the last, the marginalized, and the rejected by sharing in their condition. We are looking to share in the condition of the poor in the same way that was done by Jesus "that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty we might become rich." (2Cor 8:9)
The Vow of Poverty
As the religious vows of chastity, obedience and poverty make references to values that are eternal, those who embody them are turned into sacraments, ambassadors, signs and symbols of eternity for other Christians. While living already, in the "here and now", the values that everybody is called to live hereafter in heaven, they see and censure realities such as money, power and pleasure for what they really are, meaningless to real life.
As to the vow of chastity, since in heaven there is no death, there is no need of marriage (Mt. 22:30). To live in chastity, or universal friendship, is what awaits us all.
As to the vow of obedience what the religious want to censure is the love for power, which so many have; the mania of wanting to get to the top, thinking that once there, there is no need to obey anyone. By obedience, the religious want to demonstrate that it is by doing God's will that we find fulfillment.
The need for material goods is related to the fact of having to sustain life in its biological implications. In heaven, we will have a glorified or spiritual body (1Cor 15:44), made in the image and likeness of the physical one but not the physical body itself. Since it is an immaterial body, there is no longer need to possess or store material goods.
Many people live with the illusion that, by possessing more means of life or resources, they will live longer or can prolong life. Experience itself proclaims the truth that one cannot love both God and mammon. To possess much more than what is necessary to keep us alive, prevents us from “storing up treasures in heaven" (Mt 6:19-20), and spending life cultivating human values. It is these values that give meaning and relevance to our life, both individually and collectively, and sustain it in eternity as part of our spiritual body, with and in which we will live with God.
Living the vow of poverty, in the context of a religious community, highlights the value of sharing common goods, as well as the value of using and managing responsibly without owning them. We firmly believe that only God is the true owner of everything that people think they possess. We own nothing, not even ourselves or our lives; we are only stewards of our time, talents and treasures and of this stewardship, we will one day render account.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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