SOLO DIOS BASTA

Monday in the 8th Week of the Ordinary Time
Mk 10:17-27

Christian poverty is the virtue of personal and total freedom from all inordinate attachments in order to be always and completely available to God and His Kingdom. Just like any virtue, poverty is a grace form God more than a fruit of human effort

Jesus does not praise destitution; He advocates ordinate detachment. Jesus does not want us to be hopelessly miserable; He wishes that we would live simply always. It is not suffering for the sake of suffering that Jesus desires; it is freedom from worldly things that He demands from anyone who wishes to follow Him.

Not everything we want we need. Some of the things we think we possess are the very things that actually possess us. Many of the things we think we cannot live without are in themselves the very things that hinder us from living fully.

Poverty, as a Christian virtue, should assist us to be holy. Poverty, as a personal and complete freedom, must detach us from the world so that we may attach our selves more to God. Poverty, as grace, should lead us unto greater charity, not unto greater misery.

Just being poor does not mean we practice the virtue of poverty. For, indeed, there are many who are spiritually lacking as they are materially wanting. And being poor does not mean that we are automatically freed from inordinate attachments, for, indeed, there are many who are spiritually in bondage as they are bodily enslaved. Just being poor does not make us holy, for, indeed, there are many who are morally depraved when they are financially in need.

When our poverty is truly a virtue, a personal and complete freedom from worldly attachments, and a grace from God, then we become even richer than when we first decided to give up everything for the sake of God and His Kingdom. While we are detached from everything, we are attached to Him who gives us everything that is good.

“Solo Dios basta,” said St. Teresa of Avila. That is what makes poverty a virtue!