Pope Francis and poverty... I keep thinking about those shoes..

The Pope has certainly aroused my early love for poverty...

Even if I'm indiscreet about it.  FYI: I hated the 'old' vestments Pope Francis wore yesterday.  Truly I did.  I keep thinking about those shoes too!  Those dented toed black ones!  I hate them.  haha!  I hate looking poor and tacky.  I really do.  Just last week I was secretly feeling ashamed of my beat up seven year old winter jacket and the same old jean and worn black shoes I wear - to church!  Don't tell anyone - I sit off to the side in the dark and no one notices.  Anyway, the Pope inspires me, but I need to be careful, because I could become proud of being poor, or mortifying myself to death.  (Not gonna happen. ;)

I think Americans, and nearly everyone in the First World - are afraid of poverty - we don't like the poor - that's one reason why they are segregated into slums or shooed away from shopping districts and better neighborhoods.  We don't like being poor either.  We naturally are repelled by poor and shabby.  We like shiny and new and pretty.  American Christians - especially the Prosperity Gospel types, and their Catholic 'uild it big and glorious' types, seem to have an Old Testament view of things, and pretty much see poverty as a punishment from God, or a result of not tithing enough, or - fill in the blanks - I know you can offer some legitimate excuses.  Just kidding - kind of.  I don't really know what anyone thinks... although I'm fairly certain just about all my readers disagree with me.  That's better for me - it really is - unfriend me, please.

Anyway, aside from quips from Blessed Angela, I'll add quotes from some other saints. 

The first is Dorothy Day - I know - I said I didn't like her - but I really do.  In addition, she's there when I need her.  In fact - she and the Pope would seem to get along well.  Fancy-schmanzie Cardinal(s) of her day didn't like the idea of abject poverty either.

February 12
It is hard to convince anyone, priest or people, that charity must forgive seventy times seven, and that we must not judge.  The bitterness with which people regard the poor and
down and out.  Drink, profligate living, laziness, everything is suspected.  They help them once, they come to the door, but they come back!  They want more help.  'Where will it end?  Can I accomplish anything?  Aren't there poorer people whom i should be helping?'  These are the questions they ask themselves which paralyzes all charity, chills it, stops all good work.  If we start by admitting that what we can do is very little - a drop in the bucket - and try to do that very well, it is a beginning and a really great deal. - The Fifties, Dorothy Day
 

When we measure, dissect, analyze, categorize - poverty and charity - we miss.  We strain gnats.

The 'romantic' poverty of Therese of Lisieux and ugly stuff.

Sister Therese would keep for her own use only what was strictly indispensable, and the uglier and poorer these were, the happier she was.  She used to say that there was nothing sweeter than to lack what was necessary, because then you could say you were really poor.  She urged me never to ask for anything to be bought without first assuring myself that there was no other alternative, and then I was to choose unhesitatingly what was cheapest, like really poor people do. - Marie of the Trinity ocd, testimony for beatification of S. Therese.
 

Of course little Therese knew she had a 'safety net' in life - that being the community, which is perhaps why, after she began getting very sick, she said to herself, "If I fall, someone will find me."  More deeply, her heroic virtue, her poverty of spirit made her grasp that her only safety-net was Our Lord - and she wished for no other.

On the poverty of Christ.

I've always loved the following from Bl. Angela... a meditation from Philippians.*

The third and supreme degree of poverty is that Christ put away from him his own nature.  First because he made himself poor and needy, laying aside his own power, he, the Omnipotent, unto whom nothing was impossible, desired to appear and to live in the world as a man, weak and infirm - and impotent, in order beside the human miseries, the helpless childhood and other burdens which he took upon himself for our sake, he who was without blame or sin might appear as a feeble man.  Truth be told, he endured much weariness in his journeys, visitations, and disgrace. - Chapter X
 

Christ too had a 'safety-net' for his poverty - he is after all God...  notice the header?  He carries his greatest treasure.


Disclaimer - FYI:  Diocesan priest do not take a vow of poverty, neither do Benedictines and consecrated persons of several other congregations.  So priests can own and travel - although Canon Law asks that they maintain a spirit of poverty.  Monastics take a vow of stability, and can pretty much manipulate that to mean whatever they want, just as some religious do with their vows of poverty.  God love them.

Song for this post here.

Yeah!  I got it back. 

*He who is God the Son "did not regard equality with God something to be grasped." In becoming man, "he emptied himself" and by that choice he restored all human beings, however poor and deprived, to their original dignity. - JPII