Christian Mission and Poverty

Chapter 8: Holistic Mission

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also renounce spiritual possession, which brings him to the spiritual poverty for which blessedness is promised. But what is spiritual nonpossession? Nonpossession in general is opposed to two vices between which we make little distinction in our everyday life: the vice of miserliness and the vice of greed. Analyzing them, we will see that a miserly person may not be greedy at all, while a greedy one may even be a spendthrift. It is possible to imagine these two vices in the form of a formula like this. The miserly person says: “What’s mine is mine,” but does not always add: “What’s yours is also mine.” The greedy person says: “What’s yours is mine,” but, again, does not always add: “What’s mine is also mine.” He may be especially anxious to possess what is not his, while not being very careful about what he has. There exists, of course, a level at which greed combines with miserliness, and vice versa. This is when one says: “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is also mine.” A nonpossessing person should be free of both miserliness and greed; he should say: “What’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is also yours.” And it would be too simple to think that this concerns only material goods. Nonpossession, the absence of miserliness and greed, should concern a person’s entire inner world. We know that Christ taught us to lay down our soul for our friends. This laying down of the soul, this giving of oneself, is what makes a person poor in spirit. It is the opposite in everyday life; even with the most negative attitude toward material possession, we are used to regarding the spiritual holding back of ourselves as something positive. Whereas it is the most terrible sin, because it is not material but spiritual.