Poverty

The Marriage at Cana - c. 1495/1497

Posted on the 1st Day of the 27th Week of Ordinary Time - 2006 AD - Year B

Poverty is a maligned and misunterstood word. It's used like the word 'disease' is used, to describe something bad. Yet poverty is addictive. When you finally can get clear of the mist, the fog in the eyes and mind. When you can get clear of wanting and needing, even the essentials, you begin to understand what poverty can mean. When you decide to give everything away, what do you need to keep? When you can make the mental leap without fear. To give everything away, to give yourself away and to keep giving even when there is nothing left, because there is never nothing left. Our Lord refills you, continuously, always and forever, at the wedding feast of your giving. Where you are at once the bride that is given away, the father who loses and the groom who gains. There is always and everywhere, abundance. Even when men try to stifle and destroy it - the giving away of oneself cannot be stopped, the marriage feast of our giving is an eternal celebration, to which all are welcome and must be invited. Know this about yourself, this giving away is something all of us can do, and have to do at the very end. Here is an example: I work in a very secular job. I work with many people I don't quite gel with, people who often may see me as an obstacle - or to put it plainly, people who I find difficult to be around and who, I am guessing, don't like much being around me either. However, what makes this ok sometimes is that I love them. I find them hard and difficult and stress inducing. But in my poverty - the poverty I try to realize, very imperfectly in myself, I love them. I would die for them. All of them.

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