Christian Mission and Poverty

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Christian Mission and Poverty

The gate is broad that leads to eternal damnation, and blind as they are it seems they do not see their own destruction, for even in this life they have a foretaste of hell. They are always suffering because they are wanting more than they can have. They suffer over what they do not have, and what they lose they lose with grief. Their grief is as great as was their love in possessing. They lose all affection for their neighbors and have no care for acquiring virtue. O rottenness of the world! Not the things of the world in themselves, because I created everything good and perfect. But rotten are those who seek and keep these things with disordered love. Dearest daughter, your tongue could never tell how many are the evils that come from this. They see and experience them every day, but they do not want to see or recognize their harmfulness. 4. I have touched on these few things because I want you to know better the treasure of spiritually motivated voluntary poverty. Who knows it? My beloved poor servants who in order to be able to travel this road and enter through this narrow gate have thrown to the ground the burden of riches. Some throw it down both in fact and in spirit: These are those who observe both the commandments and the counsel in fact as well as in spirit. The others observe the counsel in spirit only, stripping themselves of attachment to wealth, so that they do not possess it with disordered love but with holy fear. In fact, they are not so much possessors of it as distributors for the poor. This is good, but the first way is perfect, more fruitful and less