"Poverty confesses that God is man's only richness. Lived according to the example of Christ, it becomes an expression of the total gift of self that the Three Divine Persons reciprocally make to eachother.... Poverty is not the rejection of progress or an ostentatious exterior misery, but a PROFOUND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM."
How can we live this poverty, today?
- sharing in the life of the persons around us
- renouncing what is not necessary (nor lamenting the absence of things)
- availability to work, not for temporal wealth alone, but for the service of the Kingdom
- balance in the use of resources, natural and otherwise
You be the judge. Is poverty, a true spirit of poverty in imitation of Christ, possible among the laity?
One might wonder what is the poverty vowed by us, as Fr. Kolbe Missionaries? First of all, we embrace that "poverty of the lay" that we are all called to live... but we vow to live it wholeheartedly. "It is a life-style in which 'being' prevales over 'having', and 'having' is not a matter of possessing exclusively for oneself, but to improve, to humanize reality, thereby overcoming those injustices under which entire populations are not able to meet even their basic needs, living in subhuman conditions."
(Fr. Kolbe Missionaries of the Immaculata, The charism: a gift, a sign, a challenge...in the heart of the world."
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