“You haven't got the spirit of poverty if, when you are able to choose in such a way that your choice is not noticed, you do not select for yourself what is worst.” (Saint Josemaria, “The Way”, at 635).
Some years ago, I remember watching to news and hearing about a very very wealthy and famous Australian businessman, who was withdrawing from his work so that he could address and treat his very severe depression.
I remember this story very well indeed because when it was told I remember that there was a lot of backlash about this man. Many every-day people in Australia felt that he was being very entitled and spoiled and selfish. Many people who I spoke to expressed the opinion that he had nothing at all to be worried or depressed about. I cannot tell you how many times I heard people say, well give me all his money and that should cure his depression.
And these comments were so insensitive. You see, this man was clearly miserably unhappy. He was so unhappy in fact that he was unable to continue to function in a normal capacity and had found himself restricted in his activities and severely limited in the way that he wished to approach the world. He also received no compassion at all. After all – people reasoned – he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, having been born into a very wealthy family. Surely with all the wealth that surrounded him, he could have the decency to be happy…
And every time I think of this man I think of the paradox of poverty. So many times, we look at the poor and we think to ourselves that the rich are better off. And of course – in some ways – this is true. After all, homelessness, and serious and prolonged poverty and generational poverty, where families are unable to support themselves for generations, is a terrible thing to think about or to behold. And when I live in my comfortable middleclass home with my comfortable middle class life, I am clearly not in a position to actually preach and carry on that it is somehow great to be extremely poor. But it is equally not great to be extremely rich.
You see, when a human being is extremely rich they create needs for themselves. Things that would be wants for someone else become necessities for them because they have the means to provide for themselves and therefore have no inclination to do anything less than the perfection to which they are accustomed. And this means that these people can become more attached to things. And it is not the wealth – but the attachment to the luxuries that it brings that results in the problem…
It is the spirit of poverty – the detachment from all things of this world – that allows a soul to actually have real wealth…
Saint Josemaria wrote in “The Way” at 635, “You haven't got the spirit of poverty if, when you are able to choose in such a way that your choice is not noticed, you do not select for yourself what is worst.”
And I have been thinking about that – the worst – as I have been thinking about poverty today…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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