HOLY WEEK: "POVERTY"
Each Sunday during this Holy Season of Lent, we will offer a reflection based on the lives and writings of Saint Francis and Saint Clare of Assisi. We hope and pray that you will find these reflections helpful as you walk with Christ Jesus on the long road toward his passion, death, and resurrection.
Absolute Poverty, Absolute Love
When time permits, all are invited to pray and meditate over this familiar passage from the Gospel of John and to consider the link between the poverty of Christ and his enduring love for us:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish,
but may have eternal life (John 3:16)
In our world, in our times, we equate poverty with hardship. We regard poverty as the product of bad luck, discrimination, ignorance, illness, or laziness. However, Francis and Clare regarded poverty as a privilege because it allowed them to devote all of their energies to God's work: to loving the Lord and to loving their neighbor -- through prayer and good works.
As Franciscans in spirit, we are called to embrace a kind of poverty: spiritual poverty. We may not be called to renounce our possessions. But we are called to renounce being possessed by our possessions. We are called to embrace spiritual poverty so that we might also devote ourselves to God's work -- through prayer and good works.
Francis and Clare chose poverty in order to more faithfully imitate Christ Jesus, who was born naked and poor in a manger and who died naked and poor on a cross. This should be the ultimate realization: the Lord's absolute and total poverty embodies his absolute and total love -- for us, for all time! Meditate again on the scripture:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish,
but may have eternal life (John 3:16)
God loved us so much that he sacrificed what he loved most for our sake. God embraced the absolute poverty of the cross as an expression of his absolute love for his children. From absolute poverty comes absolute love.
The virtue of poverty (spiritual poverty) is a movement of the heart and soul, a detachment from possessions and a keen awareness of our complete dependence on God. All that we are and all that we have comes from God. This awareness is the essence of spiritual poverty. This awareness is the essence of our faith and love for our Father in Heaven and for His Son. From absolute poverty comes absolute love.
A Great & Praiseworthy Exchange
In her letters to Agnes of Prague, Clare writes:
"When you have loved Him, you are chaste;
when you have touched Him, you become more pure;
when you have accepted Him, you are a virgin.
Whose power is stronger, whose generosity more abundant,
whose appearance more beautiful,
whose love more tender, whose courtesy more gracious..."
"O God-centered poverty,
whom the Lord Jesus Christ,
who ruled and now rules heaven and earth,
who spoke and things were made,
condescended to embrace before all else."
"What a great and praiseworthy exchange:
to leave the things of this time for those of eternity,
to choose the things of heaven for the goods of the earth,
to receive the hundred-fold in place of one,
and to possess a blessed and eternal life!"
By now, we are perhaps frightened and frustrated! Poverty?! Spiritual poverty?! How can we possibly embrace what Christ embraced for us? How can we possibly imitate such poverty or such love? Francis and Clare, our brother and sister in faith, teach us by word and example that anything (even this) can be accomplished with Christ!
When we pray with Christ Jesus, we encounter Him in our daily lives. When we reach out to Christ Jesus with love, He welcomes us and alleviates our anxieties and our sufferings. When we carry our cross in His name, He walks with us. When we embrace our poverty, when we accept our absolute dependence on Christ Jesus, He offers his absolute love. From absolute poverty comes absolute love. Consider again this familiar passage:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish,
but may have eternal life (John 3:16)
May the Lord give you peace during this Holy Week!
Saint Francis, pray for us!
Saint Clare, pray for us!
Holy men and women of Assisi, pray for us!
