And he points out that there are different types depending on what order you belong to. The structure, the character, the scope, the purpose of the work. Conspicuous examples of the difference between Franciscan poverty and Dominican poverty. Franciscan poverty with its emphasis on total poverty and even on the community not owning anything and Benedictine poverty with its insistence on sharing of gross and distribution and on individual dependence from the other. They're two different concepts, by the way. We pointed out that Grosch article in which you got seven different models of religious poverty and I asked you to make a list of those as to how they line up in your own mind, in your own estimation. In connection with their relevance to monastic poverty or to the kind of poverty that belongs to our vocation. So, I'm wondering how that turned out for you.

[01:08]

I've got one list here in the following order. Six, reliance on God alone. Seven, union with Christ. Five, union with the oppressed. Three, disponibility. And the way it is here, it's apostolic disponibility. It's availability for serving people. After six was what? After six was seven. Seven is union with Christ. This is, in other words, the first one is the most important. This is Phil's work. After six is seven, then five, union with the oppressed, then three, apostolic disponibility, then four, physical witness. Two, simplicity of life. Number one, communitarian sharing. Let's hear somebody else. It's a little different. Maybe somebody agreed entirely. It seems union with Christ would include the rest.

[02:11]

Yes, it should. That's what he says in his article towards the end, that union with Christ comprehends the rest and therefore in some way maybe it doesn't belong in the order. Nevertheless, you can put it number one and then let the others follow, in the order in which they follow from that, perhaps, for a given vocation. Six, seven, almost, it's very hard to separate. Now, union with Christ seems to... If you're in a position of Christ, then you rely on the five. Then two, the simplified part of this fact. Okay, two is simplicity of life. That's the idea that you want to simplify your life so that only one thing matters to you, right? You don't have to be concerned with a lot of goods or seeking other things or protecting them or whatever. Then four, the poverty of physical witness.

[03:14]

And then five, the union with the Lord. And then three, and then one. Okay, you two came up with one at the end. You'd be surprised, probably Cashin would include that among his priorities. I think he uses that when he talks about poverty, doesn't he? Like the Jewish community, he was talking about something else. But remember the life of Saint Anthony? Isn't that one of the words that he hears in church when he goes out? Sounds good. Yeah, that's one of them. He hears it twice. One of them is from the Gospel, when Jesus says we're the ones to pardon them. And the other one is from Acts, but I'm not sure. Anyway, this one of communitarian sharing, I would want to recommend it for a higher level, a higher rating in your list.

[04:25]

Because remember that that's what Benedictine poverty largely is. Communitarian sharing, that's number one. It's the Austin abuse by Benedictines. Okay, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't belong to the monastic life. Because it's as if... people like to point this out sometimes. Victor likes to simplify the monastic life into two ways. One is the desert ideal, the desert model, and the other is the Jewish community model. If you look at early monasticism, it's hard to find a third one that ranks with those two. So the desert model, you have a kind of absolute poverty, an absolute notion of poverty, which squares with our number six and our number two, simplicity of life and also reliance on God alone. And certainly identification with Christ, that's another one. The Jerusalem community model of monasticism may put that sharing of goods and lack of individual ownership first. And that's what you find in the Rule of St. Benedict. As soon as Robert starts to quote passages on poverty from the Rule of St. Benedict,

[05:31]

that's what you find. Nobody is to have anything himself, but everything is to be held in common. So we're getting a strong option here in the ones that we've heard so far for the individual variety of poverty. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that that abstracts from the sharing thing, the possibility of sharing in the community, or from simple lack of personal property as being poverty. One of the reasons I put it so low, at the lowest, is because it seems that it was the one that lent itself most to abuse, those other categories. Those other categories seem to be more narrow and more well-defined, whereas community sharing is just too broad. You could really leave yourself wide open. Let's share a swimming pool, let's share a tennis court. That's what happens. But you've got to realize that in the beginning of the religious life,

[06:31]

that's very important, because to give up your private property in the beginning is very important, so you hand everything over. And then, afterwards, is the question of whether it's going to be of use or not. It has to work for the soul, because the thing is, when you go to these places, you have actually a better life than you have in the world, where you're struggling. We can have it, it's so important. If you work for it, it would have been better for you. And I think that's true. This is a kind of reward in working for it. It's given. And so often we have so much available, that we can't do anything if we don't have it. That's true. I was in Santa Barbara, one of the missionaries in Santa Barbara has resident monks in Kansas community. I didn't know much about monks. I dreamed about it, and I went around, and there was a big swimming pool back there. And I said, hey, wait a minute.

[07:33]

I may have been there before that. Okay, I admit that. And yet, in monastic history, this has been a very important concept. And it corresponds with something in Christianity also, because it's an expression of the reality of Christianity, which is that we share... What do we share? We share the life of God. We share the kingdom. We share the gift which is given to us. So, what we have, basically, is what we have in common. See, there's an important theological thing, even though on a practical level it may be very, very curious, which is expressed also by the Eucharist, isn't it? How's that? The Eucharist signifies the gift of God which is given to us, and which we partake of only in common. You see? You can't have the Eucharist by yourself, as it were. It belongs to the Church, and it's always one way.

[08:37]

So, the life that we're given, the gift that we're given, is given in common. If you read the first letter of Saint John, you get the same thing. This koinonia, this fellowship which we have, which is actually fellowship with the Holy Trinity, you see? So, the idea of sharing in community, sharing property in community, expresses this beautifully. So, that instinct that the first converts had to put everything together, and not to have anything of their own, was an expression of that greatest power. Now, it may be very well that it doesn't work out all that well in history, but it's got to be recognized. I think you're making a very good point, because when you put the individual in a position like this, it's very similar to what Saint Benedict says, that what remains for us should be nothing that means favor, and what remains should be God. Okay, there's another thing here. You know where I think this falls short? It's that you draw the line around the community too small.

[09:41]

In other words, you have to unite this with the other model of union with the poor and exploited, for instance, okay? Where the community that you recognize is not just your religious community, but the community of all men, okay? That's what we're conscious of nowadays, since Vatican II, and when the world is so small. In other words, putting things in common means you just don't put your savings account in common with your brothers in the community, but in some way, the community has to put its goods in common with other men. So, you have to enlarge that concept of sharing just as the gift that comes from God has to be shared with all men, not just with one or the group. So, the church is recognizing this more nowadays. And I think what you say reflects that. But you've been speaking about it more from the point of view of having too much than the point of you sharing it with the others who don't have anything. It seems to me that if you consider it in that context, it makes more sense. But it's not easy to do that, because obviously you can't put yourself on the level of the poor man in the street. Your community can't live exactly on that level.

[10:44]

It has to be conscious of that. But sharing in the larger circle... Yes, sir? I was thinking of the Jerusalem community when Ananias didn't give the whole thing, and then he died right there. And you're wondering, the interior unity among them must have been so strong and so much on fire that it was able to do that. So, there was the interior unity, and also the exterior expression too. The interior dynamic is really something, the power that was present there. And yet, of course, we have to say that that was somehow through the power of God that he died. It was in order to say something, in order to express something. Also the fact that his death is attributed not to the fact that he didn't give everything, but the fact that he lied about it. It's his insincerity. Because I think Peter says to him, well, you could have kept your property.

[11:45]

You didn't have to say you were going to turn it over. But once you said it, you should have done it. Bang! And carried him out. I should have said that. Okay, any other lists or ideas? Peter? That's seven, number one. And six. And two. Four. Four now is visible. Yeah. And one. And five. And three. Okay, I agree with you in putting three at the end. Because three is one that relates particularly to active religious life, okay? Apostolic disponibility. That is more meaningful for the Jesuit or for the Franciscan than it is for us. Because we're not that much at the service of other people. And it's not a matter of our having an automobile

[12:47]

so that we can go and visit the sick or something like that. That's not our job. Even though it relates to some degree here to us. We have to have a parlor, you know, we have to have some furniture over in the districts and so on. We have a retreat, I said. And even the way our kitchen operates, you know, the fact that we have to have a lay cook is determined by the fact that we have retreatments and working minutes to the minute. So it is involved, but... the fact that we have to pay a cook to have a lay cook rather than having a member of the community. Okay, my own list. I made this one first. Six, two, seven. And I think I agree with two of the originalists on that. I had number one down as being a reliance on God alone. And secondly, simplicity of life. And then thirdly, union with Christ. But then I thought that over and I decided it was seven, six and two. Because the union with Jesus and I should come from the others and others should flow from that.

[13:48]

That's our theological core, you know, the gospel. And then the other reasons that we think out flow from that. Monner said somewhere that the first reason for religious poverty, or any poverty, Christian poverty, is just the person of Christ and the word of Christ based purely on faith. And then the other things are sort of things that we pull out of that afterwards, you know. There are conceptualizations or interpretations or elaborations. But that's the first thing. But we need to go into that a little more afterwards because it may be the grossest treatment isn't complete. And then the other four, I'd have a sharp line drawn between those first three, which I think are very relevant to our life, and the other four which really aim in other directions, okay? Number four is kind of... Which is for a visible reference? Yeah. To a higher life. Okay. You say, well, the riches of this world are really not what counts, but the wealth and the treasure you have in hand.

[14:49]

That's right. And that's an important one, too, which we're going to have to talk about a bit afterwards because I don't think gross poverty is sufficient. So the witness is important. The reason why I drew that line in between the first three and the other four is for this, that monastic life is particularly related to what you're doing in yourself, to God's work on you, right, or in you. And then the other ones refer to something outside of life, even though that something outside may be very important like the visible witness, okay? For instance, then I had after that, let's see, four, five, one, four, five, and three. One is the communitarian sharing. I gave it that kind of high rank because I think it does pertain to us, and it's important also as a visible witness.

[15:50]

Four, the visible witness. Five, the... What's that? Union with the poor. Union with the poor, yeah. And then three, the apostolic disponibility. Both of my lists have three at the end. My second list, after thinking it over, was seven, six, two, then the heavy line. Five, one, four, and three. Giving union with the oppressed more importance. Five, one? Five, one, four, and three. Three was still low-manning to our law. I think number five is very problematic. Yeah, that's nice. Union with the oppressed. It's problematic in the way he presents it, right? Because he says that here poverty is an evil, all right? And it also often turns into being too rich. Yeah, yeah. Right. But it seems to me that it relates very closely to number six, though, where he says, he talks about sharing the human condition, okay?

[16:53]

It shades into that. And if I were to try to describe it for a monk, I think I'd eliminate that kind of polarity there between the poor and the rich, okay? But solidarity with the oppressed is part of a monk's entering into the human condition because the poor and the oppressed are closer to the human condition. And they're the people of the Beatitudes, you know, in the Gospel. And the monk throws in his lot with those people. But not against the rich. The way he puts that down is pretty harsh. And one reason is because he's trying to draw clear lines between his different models, you see? So he tries to push them apart, not let them overlap. We have to let them overlap when we try to make a synthesizer. For number seven, does he say a union with the poor Christ or something like that? Yeah, and that I have to comment on. I have to change that for myself. Because if you look at all this now, there's something missing. There's something missing. Now, what's missing? Glory. It's not just the poor Christ, but it's the Christ who is poor and risen.

[17:59]

Now, he says it's the Paschal Christ, but he doesn't point out that when you unite yourself with the poor Christ, you're uniting yourself with the riches of Christ, too. And then I said, well, who says it? St. Paul says it. If you look, consider some of these passages in St. Paul. Exactly because you need to unite yourself with Christ. Yeah, it's not enough. And sometimes the Franciscan thing, you see, has got onto that so much that it's been unable to open into the riches of the Kingdom, I think. But Philippians 3, for instance, the first passage, where St. Paul says that he has given up everything he had, like Don, for the surpassing knowledge of my Lord Jesus Christ. Now, that's riches for him, and that's something that he's got. It's not just a hope for the future, but it's something he's already got. Then there's Colossians. Colossians 1, where he says, 27, To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery,

[19:00]

which is Christ in you, the hope of the Lord. That's riches, he says, and he likes to repeat that word in these letters. Ephesians and Colossians, and you've already got it. It's not just in the future. In chapter 2, he says, To have all the riches of assured understanding, and the knowledge of God's mystery, of Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Okay, he's talking about a present wealth that you have, and he talks about it with greedy language, you know, the sort of language of the hoarder, the greedy man. For in him dwells the whole fullness of deity bodily, and you have come to fullness of life in him. This idea of the riches of the kingdom, of the gospel of Christ. 2 Corinthians, chapter 6, He says, We're sorrowful yet always rejoicing, poor yet making many rich, having nothing yet possessing everything. Now there's the paradox right there, you see,

[20:01]

this gospel poverty and yet having everything. And you can let yourself be poor because you've got everything, in Christ in some way, and earlier. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels. The treasure was in interior prisons of Christ, in the heart, and everything that comes from that. In Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 1, 27, 17, there's another one, 27. That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation, and the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you. What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power? And I so believe. 2, 3, and 9. Amen. Not over.

[21:30]

To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God the Creator of all things. That's not... You get the idea. And a couple of other places in Ephesians. Now, the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. The notion of riches. He's kind of obsessed with that, I know he is. So, what seems very important here, and is missing in Grotius' point of view, because he's looking at sort of... This is the trouble with this model thing sometimes. You know, you try to get all the versions, and you miss the key in some way. You can do that. You can try to get all the aspects. He's got the key to the key there, when he says union with the poor Christ. It's not only the poor Christ, it's union with the paschal mystery of Christ, or the death and resurrection of Christ, or the poor life of Christ, and at the same time,

[22:32]

the glory of the risen Christ, the riches of the risen Christ, which is what St. Paul was talking about. St. Paul was talking about exactly that. Exactly that. When he says, poor yet no rich in merit, and having nothing and possessing nothing. See, that's the point. Okay, let me read you something from your honour. As usual, seems to be able to hit the bullseye. I'm trying to find what the essence of something is. Evangelical poverty. This is in his article on theology of poverty, in Theological Investigations, Volume 8. This is page 187 and the following. Evangelical poverty, both in its outside and its inside form, both the grace and the expression, is simply intended as a response to the situation in saving history, in which man stands by the very fact that the kingdom of God has been made eschatologically present in Jesus. Eschatologically means finally, at the end of time, the last age.

[23:34]

Poverty, like all renunciations. And he talks here about, of course, St. Paul says, have as though you had not. Remember, the unmarried state the man who is unmarried is free. Poverty, like all renunciation, as conceived of in the New Testament, is the realization of faith and the coming of that grace of God, which is God himself, and which transcends all this worldly fulfillment such as can be achieved by man himself. So, it's the gift of God himself, which simply outweighs everything else and makes everything else just fade into the shadows, which makes poverty possible and makes poverty desirable. The person somehow wants to express the presence of this thing. Now, because this grace is the absolute self-bestowal of God as he is in himself, the gift of God himself, and because it has only now been revealed in Christ as the glory of God himself, which exceeds all earthly measures and all values available to human experience,

[24:35]

therefore, it is only now that man can respond to this coming of God. He can so respond in virtue of the fact that he, who so far as his purely natural state is concerned, is once more one who is held captive within himself by sin, and therefore can only experience his openness to the glory of God, which transcends his own nature as a deadly pain. He has long sentences running after him. Be patient. That was all the parenthesis. Suffers that this worldly value is to fall away from him in the act of faith, which God himself, and not his own autonomous powers, inspires him to make. Yet to make this same sacrifice without being called to it by God in this way would be meaningless, immoral, and contrary to his own nature. The act of faith is realized and made concrete, that is, in a manner which embraces the entire reality of man, his physical nature, his social relationships, and the place he occupies in history. The poverty business is the working, the expression of it in the things around you, whether the things that you use are the things that you would have, or whatever material things must be.

[25:37]

In the virtue of the fact that he gives up realities and values, when to sacrifice them is either an act of despair or surrender with regard to the meaning of the existence, or else a transcending of this worldly order, of this worldly order, in order to attain to the reality of God himself, which comes to us from above in the form of grace. On this showing, the meaning of poverty is that it is the act of faith in that grace which comes from above as the unique and definitive fulfillment of human existence. Okay? Now, that is given to every Christian, and so it's not only the religious. Every Christian, in some way, has the same grace. The religious responds to it in a particular way by the monk. Is he saying there that you form it first because you talk to us, in some sense? That's right. It's not that you think yourself No. He doesn't say that. Another person might say that. Like, Robert stands in that direction

[26:38]

when he says that poverty is a means. Poverty is a means to the achievement of love, a means to being filled with God. But Rana has pointed out something on this side. There's truth on both of those sides, but Rana is expressing the greater truth, I think, with a real way. Many seem to practice poverty in many different ways. Sure, sure. Not only about a religion, say, if they're not one of the scientific formulas, but look at the hippies, for example. Sure. They saw something as insanity and they wanted to fight it. Sure. So you've got all those different reasons for practicing poverty, and lots of them are good reasons, too. Not every reason for practicing poverty is a good one, but lots of those are good reasons. So, what he's trying to do is isolate the particularly Christian reason here. Built right into that is a particularly Christian monastic reason, which is really the same thing that he's expressed in a particular way. But I wanted to get to what he says about... Yeah. What Peter wrote up there.

[27:41]

It's quite impossible for one who makes an act of faith in this sense... You make an act of faith also that the world can be redeemed. In other words, it's not just negativity as regards the world. It's quite impossible for one who makes an act of faith in this sense and thereby becomes poor to regard the absolutely essential form in which this faith must find its fulfillment as consisting in a state in which as far as such a thing is physically possible, he possesses absolutely nothing at all. There you have a compulsive kind of poverty in which you figure, only if I empty myself completely can I receive God. Okay? That's the absolutizing of what he was saying. But if you read St. John the Cross, you can get that idea. So it's very delicate because there's a truth there and it's easily misinterpreted. And we're going to have to talk about this a bit. It's not enough to say that you are poor because you realize the fullness of the Holy Spirit in yourself, the fullness of the riches of the kingdom. Yeah, but how much of the time do we realize the fullness of the riches of the kingdom in ourselves so that other things become... so that we have no desire for them? There's often also the time of poverty

[28:45]

when you are letting yourself be empty and you're foregoing the things that you want, the things that you would like to have, the things that would fill your heart, and waiting for God to come in emptiness. Okay? So there are two sides to that thing. This comes out when we talk about David Knight's version of the Kingdom of God because I think he puts all his weight on one side, the side of fullness. This would in fact be tantamount to saying that freedom from the world is ipso facto and in itself possession of God. Now, this is not true. Okay? So that would be the kind of asceticism which says that as soon as I empty myself from everything else, I've got God. In other words, I can sort of twist God's arm. I can force God to come to me, to give himself to me, simply by letting go of everything else. That's the big danger in reading John McClose, and fail to recall the freedom of God.

[29:49]

The freedom of grace, which is not something that we can extract from God simply by putting pressure on ourselves. Sometimes we can feel that. You get into an ascetic thing where you think the more you sort of work yourself up or the more you do, the closer God is to you. And yet, it's our own energy in some way, the freedom of God. This grace cannot be obtained by force, either by seeking for the fullness of the world itself or by fleeing from the world, taking either of these approaches simply for themselves. And furthermore, in making the act of faith, we can only allow for the fact that the world has a positive value of its own if we maintain a positive relationship with it. This is important, psychologically. The petty-minded man, the man who is timid, undeveloped, frugal in the demands he makes upon life, the man who, right from the outset, has the standards of the petit bourgeois,

[30:49]

only because his own nature is middle-class standard... low, middle-class standard. I don't know. Who are the petit bourgeois, anyway? The stingy kind. Those are the little... well, the people who put their hope... I don't think you're a petit bourgeois. They put their whole life into some kind of petty gaze. Middle-class America. Well, it's the man whose life is built on dollars and cents, I think, with security. He's not the rich man. No. The rich man is a tenuous issue. You know, very often, if you're talking to a rich man, it would often be a man who is... in a positive way. Sometimes a rich man is a man who puts food on the table.

[31:53]

Sometimes. I think he'll agree with me, too. I don't know. Okay. The man who, right from the outset, has the standards of the petit bourgeois only because his own nature is too paltry to make many claims upon life is certainly not the man who is capable, to any notable extent, of bringing the meaning of the act of faith to its fullness in poverty. See, that's a different kind of poverty. And that can happen in the religious life, too. That can happen in the monastic life very easily because it looks good, you know. Well, gee, he's got poverty. That man is a real ascetic. But it can be meanness of spirit that's leading to it and that's at the root of it, and not generosity. See, poverty is supposed to be a fruit of generosity. It's a negative wealth, I guess. Negative wealth is your own poverty. It is, it can be. In other words, you're holding on to your own poverty. And so, normally, that kind of person would be incapable of receiving a gift with gratitude, you know, or receiving something that comes unexpectedly, a windfall of some kind, and enjoying it

[32:54]

because by that he would seem to be losing his own poverty, his own wealth of poverty, exactly. Because it's an ego thing, once again, you see. It's a kind of a vulture ego thing. Maybe even a courtesy, you know, he might not be able to receive the courtesy. Probably not. And he's going to have probably the same point of view with respect to asceticism all along the board. Not just poverty. I know because I've done it. I've done it for years. Would St. Therese be an exemplary model of poverty? Yeah, she is. And this is tricky because she comes from the Petit Bourgeois, I think, and that whole context is around her. There are a lot of things there. And yet she manages to be generous. She manages to be generous in the middle of all her pettiness, you see. And in fact, even reading her language sometimes, you could suspect that kind of pettiness, but it's not there. She's very generous, you see. That's the difference. The saint showing that generosity in that context.

[33:55]

Her community was very poor. They were living up to the spirit of Carmel. And she gave herself to it. What I said about her living in a Petit Bourgeois context, culturally, a lot of the things, the sentimentality, the gooey stuff that you associate with it, and also the pettiness in her own monastery, anything that is spirit of generosity. So she was able to be a saint and to be generous apart from this stuff. And her thing is poverty, actually. Spiritual poverty in the sense of littleness. Not having a blooming thing, including spiritual gifts and spiritual experiences. She didn't have any, you know. What do you mean by generosity? Is it response to grace? Response to grace. Response to the poverty. Okay. Poverty is supposed to be generosity.

[34:58]

In other words, poverty can be giving away. That's what it's supposed to be. Renunciation as an act of generosity, not as an act of faultiness, or timidity, or security, or anything else like that. What a hoarding. As Maumelle says, you can have a reverse poverty, which is actually a wealthiness, if you consider that the more you renounce, the more you've got. Kind of monastic. There's a true wealth in those, because when there's a negative wealth, it's just negative. A negative thing, but then there's a truth, a fact, that will be a problem in the end. That's right. See, the difference is like, it's very tricky in a sense. Without discernment, it's very tricky, because look at St. Francis. It's as if poverty was wealth for St. Francis, right? Yes. And yet, look at the heart of St. Francis, the generosity, the courage. That's the difference. You see, it's the heart that tells you whether the guy is really free,

[35:59]

or whether he's really stuck on his poverty, stuck on his observance. But he had the freedom of David. It's the same thing. It's the heart, I think. The freedom of King David. It's the same kind of traits you find in Francis of Assisi, with his poverty. It always comes from a reliance on God, a great closeness to God. But the way that he is stingy, is greedy about poverty, and about the observance of it, he was terribly rigid sometimes. You might think that it was what I was talking about. His rigidness there is what he does with the poverty, not the poverty itself. Yeah, yeah. But boy, he was strict on the external poverty, the observance itself. Excuse me. What about the attitude with Benedictine poverty? I've heard this, where people think about poverty and then they own it. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, are you really,

[37:01]

are you supposed to say, Are you allowed, are you allowed to live in poverty? Or are you supposed to concentrate on your own individual? We're going to get to that. But there's, that's not so easy. It's very tricky. Because in a sense, everything does belong to you, but you're not, and in a sense, you should consider yourself as being a child of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the monastery in some way, being a sacrament, or a sign of the Kingdom of Heaven, in the sense that everything belongs to everybody inside of it, okay? But that doesn't mean that you appropriate things to yourself. There's another principle that comes in there. In your personal poverty, and your meekness, or your humility, which doesn't permit you to use everything as if it belonged to you as a private citizen. So, it's tricky. There's that story of that Russian monk who was, he started out very poor, as a very poor child, in a poor family,

[38:02]

and then, they made him bishop, and then he had all these things, you know, ice cream and everything. But when he would look and see the poor and the oppressed, he would be wrenched inside. And so, that's his poverty. Being in riches, but not being, not really being rich. There have been a number of bishops, and popes. There's one thing that I think you can work on. In regard to a person's personal style of life, some people have a natural tendency to accumulate things. Without really being attached to it, they just kind of start... I'm one of those people that has stuff stacked to the rafters, stuff in my cell, you know, things like toys and things like that. And, I clean it out, but then it just starts coming back in. And then some of these cells I've been in,

[39:03]

some of the others, there's nothing. There's nothing to do. How the heck do you do it? There are three solutions. One is to have a fire every once in a while. Another one is to have another place, which is not really yours, you know, where things are kept, like tools and stuff like that. And another solution is just to have a check about once a year or something like that. They used to do this in a lot of communities, where you'd make a list of everything you had. And if the list got so long that it was a real pain in the neck to make it, you'd know already that you had too much stuff. But where you would have a certain check, like a narrow place where you go through, once a year or so, when you just get rid of everything, as soon as everything is built up. I read that somewhere. He said once a year one should review his... Yeah, he recommends something like that as a possibility. And if a person has a tendency, that's one of the few ways of dealing with it, you know, is once a year or something like that, just make a check and get rid of everything very severely. Which allows for

[40:04]

what should happen once a year. Because, like, in the Javascript industry, you know, Colin Brendan was showing this, you know, and he was saying in the past, especially, that they were alone, only a private property of the shoeboxes and so on. Yes. It was just a partition in between. There was no place. I remember, even at Vina, I think all they had was a little wooden box and this was in the common shower room. And then you had the partition. Right. Okay, now the question is, does it help? Does it work? And is it necessary? They changed it to private rooms because partly,

[41:05]

other things in the Rapeseller was just, you know, it was just fierce. So, other things came in to cause the change. But I suspect that maybe it isn't necessary to be quite that absolute. It's like a boot camp experience, but a boot camp experience that extends for your whole lifetime, that's the question. It may be enough to do that for a while. Maybe we should do something like that and we should. Roberts points out that poverty becomes harder, common ownership becomes harder as the years go on. Because as a person gets older, he does tend to make a private corner for himself. It's gone. It disappears, it gets broken. Sure. So you get a little possessive of where you want to do a job, you don't have a tool to do it with. You spend the whole day looking for a tool. Now, it's best if those things can be kept in a separate place, which is like

[42:06]

not a person's own home. It's best if they're in a really good place. So at least he's got it in another category where it doesn't seem to be private property anymore. And then he can keep a better watch on his own stuff, on what he has in his room. Umberto has little places set aside that he keeps locked. And then when he needs something, he just goes there and unlocks it. Yeah. Or like if somebody has tools, he has a locker or a locked place to put them, that sort of thing. Okay. I'm going to get back to work. The ideal of rivetous poverty, therefore, can never consist in the fact that the realization of it is regarded as increasing in precisely the same proportion as the act of externally ridding oneself of material goods. It's not that simple a thing. The more I get rid of them, the more God I have. Martin used to joke about it, like the revisitory, just in terms of poverty. Like a list

[43:07]

of... You make a list of everything you've gotten and you cross it up. When you get to the end you've got everything crossed up and you're holding it. He says it doesn't work. He says it doesn't work. But what is it in the person who wants it? It's compulsiveness. In other words, compulsiveness, which means that you've got a driving into something which you don't understand but which takes over. People can have a compulsive fasting drive, they can have a compulsive poverty drive, and there can be all kinds of hidden motives underneath them, including self-hatred and all kinds of things. But what he's putting it down to here is a kind of small mindedness, a kind of, I don't know, fearfulness, timidity or something like that. He goes on with that. Nor is it the ideal of those who are too easily satisfied with commonplace things or that of those too easily satisfied with... Because it's not a great thing necessarily to be content with the meanest and the worst and to have no sense of beauty

[44:07]

and to like a kind of misery. Not necessarily a good thing. Traherne is going on with it, Thomas Traherne, and he says that the greatest thing is that meanness is our desire for glory, our love of beauty and our greediness. It's got to be transformed. Or that of those who in a spirit of narrow-minded pedantry mount guard over the standards of a petit bourgeois way of life of this kind and legalistically try to ensure that the rules of the game are kept for their own sake. See, it's easy for that to happen in a strict, poor monastery like an old tempest monastery. And all kinds of motives creep into that watchfulness of the guard and the judgmentalness. Yeah, and even the things in the shoeboxes. Sure, you'd be looking at somebody else's shoebox. My holy cards. Well, that's the way it is. Holy cards. I don't want

[45:10]

to think it's a terrible thing when I can't see them. You'd be peeking into somebody else's shoebox to see if he's got a bigger two-by-two than you do. the truth, basically. Because nothing you can do outside of yourself like that necessarily makes you any better, necessarily makes your heart any better. You put so much energy in that that you pray or something. People do, you know, fight too fast or do some kind of cynical work. And if you put so much energy you won't get it. It's praying. And that's the essential thing. You know, it seems like that's the center. You know, it may be okay for a while if you're just trying to break some bad attachment, some bad habit, but somebody has to steer him out of that, otherwise they're just wasting their energy. And some of the Zen Buddhists are very good on these things. They just have a space where they lay out their sleeping bed. That's all. They don't even have

[46:10]

a sofa. Okay. Yeah, Knight is the fellow that picks up from Rahner. Everything he says mostly is based on Rahner. And he's got another notion here which is useful, and that is the notion of expression of the grace that you have. Self-expression, which he says, I'll just throw this out as something you might want to look into. Self-expression as being self-creation, and this he says is the key to poverty and to chastity and obedience too. That these are ways in which you try to remake yourself, as it were, in conformity to the grace which you have conceived. So, you don't understand it now as a means towards an end, but you understand poverty, for instance, rather as an expression of what you have received. And this is what Rahner says, and what St. Paul says, I think, that since we've been given the grace of the kingdom, it's a matter

[47:11]

of somehow finding a way in which to express this interior gift. Also, you remember that foreword of Anthony Bloom to The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the translation there, where he says that the only way that these desert fathers could express what they had received, the vocation, the grace they received, is to live on nothing. To live on nothing that came from the earth so that they could show and express that they were rooted in heaven. Now that's putting it very crudely and bluntly. But their fasting, and their solitude, and their celibacy, and everything else, is like the burning bush in a sense. It's simply the natural response of a man who is living from somewhere else. He's living from somewhere else. Like Jesus said, my kingdom is not from here. And they're not doing it primarily for witness, they're doing it just in response. And the witness is the natural consequence of what they're doing. But what they're doing is, can you say it's for themselves?

[48:11]

It's just like a plant. A plant has a certain seed, a certain form it's going to assume, so it grows up into that form. And it's the way, the grace is a seed, and it has to produce its own form in you. And so it does that. And then to talk about one purpose or another is beside the point, because it's not so much doing something for a purpose as responding to a grace which you receive. Okay? A different point of view. Now according to him, this self-expression is actually self-creation, is making yourself through these decisions that you make, and these decisions are decisions of renunciation, which make your personality according to the form of Christ. It's a pretty good way of thinking about it. But the extent of certain things also sustain the vocation. So it works both ways. There's the move from inward to outward, and there's the move from outward to inward. The poverty helps you to focus on God

[49:12]

alone, right? And Jesus says how hard it is for man who has riches to enter the kingdom of heaven, okay? It's hard because the external stuff is in his way. All right, so the external act of renunciation favors your orienting yourself to God, favors your focusing on him, and favors the growth of love in your heart. But at the same time, the giving up of things expresses this grace which you receive. So it works both ways. Exactly. Now, Roberts concentrates on one way, and Grosh, he's talking about both ways, especially when he talks about external witness and so on, he's talking about the outward movement. Knight tends to focus totally on the outward direction, and Rahner pretty much, although I didn't read just now all of his treatment of it, but it works both ways. And in that sense you can say it's like a sacrament, which both expresses and does. So the expression is the movement outward, in a sense, and the doing is the movement inward. So it's a

[50:14]

sacramental response to the grace which one has received. And that grace is what? That grace is an identification with Christ, not only the poor Christ, or the crucified Christ, but the Christ who was poor, crucified, and risen, so that this richness is inside of But then we get to this point where is that richness inside of us, and therefore you can have this sort of illusion that well therefore everything just ought to fall away from us. We ought to be as poor as mice already and happy as a lot, and we ought to be just like St. Paul in 2 Corinthians. Poor, we don't have anything, but we're happy and just filled and overflowing and full of love. And we're not. Most of the time we're not. Don't tell anybody that we're not. So there's this whole other thing about the emptiness St. Paul says, I'm cold, I'm hungry, I'm going home. St. Paul says, if we hope for

[51:17]

Christ only in this world, we're the most miserable of all people, he says. Remember? Only in this world, because what we have in this world is miserable. But he's talking about the extraordinary. So the other side of this is the emptiness and the waiting and passing through the desert experience, and passing through the poor life of Jesus, okay, his time in the desert and so on, and his privations while he was on earth, expecting the resurrection. So here you get that paradox which we always have between the kingdom, which we're waiting for and moving towards, and the kingdom which is already here, already inside of us. There's no easy, you know, solution to that problem. So your whole life is spent passing through going through a phase in the desert? Yeah, I think so. Your whole life is still outside the kingdom, in a sense, because not until after we die do we have it fully in the kingdom. On the other hand, the kingdom is inside of us, and to a certain extent, and

[52:17]

sometimes very strongly, we experience and enjoy the kingdom. So we've just got this too sad story. OK, I didn't expect to spend so long on this today. But if we were to propose a sort of structure for this whole thing, first of all I'd raise the question of what is the relation of poverty with the Eucharist, because I think in some way the Eucharist expresses the meaning of poverty. This gift which comes into the world and then remains hidden in a way causes us to poverty. a common sharing and is supposed to bring about a new life within us which makes it possible to be fed, not so much from this world, but from within. And it's present and at the same time it's hidden and expected. The Eucharist somehow says all that. There's a charism of poverty also for individuals.

[53:18]

That's right, which goes beyond... The Eucharist that each person gives according to his... Oh, I see what you mean, yeah, yeah. Like one member of the body. And one member will have the charism to witness to poverty in a special way and another person won't be able to, simply because of his health or because of the other needs that he has, because he hasn't received that grace. And it's different for everybody. But there are norms. Norms of poverty in the world. Sure, there are minimum norms, okay, and communal norms that govern the whole group, but then each individual is going to be a little bit different. Often it's hard to reconcile those two things, because one part becomes an invidious thing, if you start looking at one another and judging one another and being envious of each other. That's what I was wondering, is how do you define the degree of poverty concretely? Even St. Paul, what degree did he live poverty or what he says all the time? He says, I know how

[54:19]

to abound and I know how to be poor. So his poverty seems to have depended a lot on where he was in the situation. If he was with rich Christians, I'll bet he wouldn't insist on living a very poor standard of life. But he insisted on earning his own living, remember? He didn't want to live at the expense of others. And that's a lot for somebody who's got to live a full life as a preacher, as an apostle like he did. It's hard for us to know exactly how poor he was. But what I mean is, how do you define what poverty is, what religious poverty is, to what degree is it going to be so much less poverty or even too much less That's the difficulties, because there isn't an absolute level to correct that thing. It's different in every situation. And so the whole concrete problem was how to determine that. Like the

[55:19]

desert father that had been rich and had a comfortable life, and then when he lived in the desert he had a strong man. But for him it was too strict. That's right. There are two stories there from Arsenius. I was going to save you from the desert. And then he went into the desert and it says in number four, just as none in the palace had worn more splendid garments than he when he lived there, so no one in the church wore such poor clothing when he was in the desert. But then there's another story about Arsenius. This is the one you're referring to. Once he was sick at Cetus and the priest came to take him to church and put him on a bed with a small pillow under his head. Now behold an old man who was coming to see him saw him lying on a bed with a little pillow under his head and he was shocked. He said, is this really Abba Arsenius this man lying down like this? Some of

[56:19]

them didn't even lie down to sleep, they just sit. Then the priest took him aside and said to him, in the village where you live, what was your trade? This one who was criticizing Arsenius. He says, I was a shepherd. And how did you live? I had a very hard life. Then the priest said, and how do you live in your cell now? The other replied, I'm more comfortable in my cell. And he said to him, do you see this Abba Arsenius? When he was in the world he was the father of the emperor, surrounded by thousands of slaves with golden girdles, all wearing collars of gold and garments of silk. Beneath him were spread rich coverings. While you were in the world as a shepherd you did not enjoy even the comforts you now have, but he no longer enjoys the comforts you now And he said to him,

[57:21]

do you see this Abba Arsenius? And said to see this Abba Arsenius? him, he said, this brother had a bank Yeah, that's Arsenius, too. And then he said, well, he needs it. Right. Robert's quotes that. He's got, he's writing the book for you. In other words, his proportion to need, is the person needs it. And St. Benedict is the same way. His distribution is made not on an equal basis, but according to the need of each one. That's right. It was enough for the need of everybody,

[58:21]

but nobody had too much. That's a kind of a magical thing. Okay. One question here. In what way is poverty an end for a monk? Knight tends to say that it's an end. Not absolutely, but he says, religious poverty is more of an end in itself, though not in an ultimate sense, of course, than simply a means to some other virtue or effect. It is not quite the same as austerity, but it is definitely not the ideal of moderation. Well, he says more there than we're interested in right here. Whereas Robert says that poverty is not an end, but is a means to a goal, and the goal is love. He says this on page 66 of ours. The reason for these differences is simply that poverty is a means to something better, perfection in love and in the fulfillment of one's particular vocation.

[59:22]

What do you make of that? Why does Knight say that it's an end? Because he's talking from the point of view of self- expression, right? Expressing the grace that you have. Not witness, unless you say witness to yourself, but this law of organic expression, which he's talking about, of living the grace that you're given. And so poverty in a sense becomes an end because it is the expression, it's the fullness of expression in this life. So he's going from the inside out. Roberts is coming from the outside in. Poverty helps to sanctify you by facilitating the growth of love. And both of those are valid. And of course poverty is in no sense an absolute. St. Francis is interesting. His grasp of poverty seems to be very tangible. Poverty is a thing, is a ritual, is a charism, is a spirit. The spirit

[60:24]

of poverty. He talked about lady poverty. Does he talk about the spirit of poverty too? Well the essence of poverty. For him it was like something he could feel. Like being able to sit or being able to do something. And that was his charism I think, to have that intense sense of poverty, just like it was something he could feel in himself. But I don't think in a sense that there is a spirit of poverty as an entity. I think there can be a charism of poverty, a kind of gift of the Holy Spirit, which is a particular tone, a particular coloration of the spiritual life, the Christian life, but not the spirit of poverty as a thing, as a separate thing. That's the notion that St. Francis gives you, because often the founder of a religious order will have a very strong and distinct charism, a conviction

[61:25]

as if the thing was right in front of him, as if he could look at it. But that's not his personal gift, and his personal gift would be pastime. Okay, now Knight, when he talks about all of this, as I say, he emphasizes, also when he talks about celibacy, he talks as if the kingdom of heaven was so present that it's just like trading stuff which is hollow for that which is real, and which you immediately enjoy. So I think he over-accents this realized eschatology, he over-accents the now enjoyment of the kingdom at the expense of the waiting. Whereas you'll find other people who emphasize the emptiness and the desert experience. David Knight, because he emphasizes eschatology. Now, we've got this expression realized eschatology, okay, eschatology is the last thing, eschatology,

[62:25]

let's say, is the kingdom, the kingdom of God, which is the gift that Jesus brings us. Now, ordinarily, you think of that as being in the future, and you wait for it in faith, hope, and, you know, expectation, emptiness, and so on, the desert experience. Knight, however, it is present, it's present in the Eucharist, but it's present also in our life, and we experience the kingdom, we experience the good things that God gives to us, but you can accent either one side, or the other side, you can accent the already or the not yet, okay. Now, knight puts all the weight on the already, as if the kingdom is such a real thing as if the kingdom

[62:57]

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