Next: The Vow of Chastity Up: Monasticism Interiorized Previous: The Three Temptations, the Contents
Our Lord's answer: “Not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God,” indicates the passage from the old curse: “In the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread,” to the new hierarchy of values, to the primacy of spirit over matter, of grace over necessity. In the house of Martha and Mary, Jesus passed from the material repast and physical hunger to the spiritual banquet, to hunger of the one thing necessary. The version of the beatitudes in St. Luke's Gospel accentuates the reversal of situations: “Blessed are the poor... those who hunger.” Even physical poverty “in the sweat of your brow” is no longer a curse, but a sign of election placed on the humble, the last and the least, as opposed to the rich and powerful. The “poor of Israel” available for the kingdom, and more generally “the poor in spirit”, receive as a gift, gratuitously, “the wheat of angels”, the Word of God in the eucharistic bread.
If the stones mentioned in the temptation had become bread, this miracle would have expelled “the poor man” above all, not the beggar who is the object of charity bazaars, but the poor one who shares his being, his eucharistic flesh and blood. Thus, does every truly poor person “in the sweat of his heart” share his being. Such a poverty was preached by the Fathers of the Church of the type of St. John Chrysostom. The Gospel requires what no political doctrine would demand from its adherents. On the world scale, only an economy based on need and not on profit has any chance of succeeding, but it entails sacrifices and renunciation. One cannot enjoy material goods with a total absence of order. True needs vary according to vocations, but the essential principle is found in independence in regard to all possessions.
Absence of the need to have becomes a need not to have. The disinterested freedom of the spirit in regard to things restores its capacity of loving them as gifts from God. To live in what is “given in addition” is to live between destitution and the superfluous. However, the monastic ideal does not preach formal poverty but a wise frugality of needs.
The measure of poverty, which is always very personal, requires a creative inventiveness and excludes all sectarian spirit. The problem is not in the privation but in the use; it is the quality of gift that one puts in the proffered glass of water that justifies man at the last judgment. This is why St. James makes clear the meaning of alms: “Give aid to orphans and widows in their tribulation.”14.29 If there is nothing to be shared, there remains the example of the unjust steward of the Gospel parable who distributes the goods of his master (inexhaustible love) in order to win friendships in Christ.
He who possesses nothing becomes, like St. Symeon the New Theologian, “the poor brother of everybody”. Simeon, Anna, Joseph and Mary were “the poor of Israel” looking for the consolation of Israel, but they were already rich in God, for the Holy Spirit was upon them.14.30 Thus the Blessed Virgin kept all these things in her heart, made them her very self, and the Holy Spirit made of her “the Gift of Consolation” and “the Gate to the Kingdom”.