Poverty and Detachment

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

A number of years ago, there was a new Archbishop appointed in Singapore, and he decided to change all the parish priests. So about twenty-eight out of thirty parish priests had to change parishes.

The previous Archbishop had not made many changes and so, for many people, this was the first time changing in thirty years. Some of the priests were in their 80s, and so a change expert was brought in. (I didn't know there was such a thing!)

This man gave a seminar on change. He was an executive coach from Citibank, used to coaching executives about how to handle change, because sometimes they might have to change from city to city, or country to country, and they'd have to get a new house, and their wife would have to be happy, and they would need a school for their children, and all these different things.

This man went through the various stages that he would go through with these executives. He said the first question that executives ask when they're asked to change is, "Who told the boss that I should be the one to change?” and so on.

He said, "There's one particular piece of advice that I give to all these executives, and that is: be light. Be light.

“Because if you set up your office to look like your home, and you have a picture of your grandmother and your great grandmother and your grandchildren and everybody else decorating the walls, and you get a letter at 9 o'clock one morning saying, ‘Thank you very much for your services. We no longer need your services in this organization. Kindly vacate your office by 12 noon today,’ you may need three days to dismantle your office. You need to be able to just close your laptop and go.”

Really, what this man was talking about was the virtue of detachment and poverty from a human perspective, but those words seem very relevant to the lives that we lead. It's a good thing to try and “be light,” to have few possessions.

“Don't create needs for yourself,” said St. Josemaría in The Way, “... he has most who needs least” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 630).

If we're going to buy something, often it's worthwhile asking ourselves: Do I really need this thing? Could I use my money in a better way or to help some family that might not have this particular thing?

The world we live in tends to create needs for us, to convince ourselves that I need this particular thing, or I have to make this trip, or I have to go here, or have that, or make this phone call.

When Our Lord was born in Bethlehem, His very birth wanted to speak to us about two specific virtues: one is detachment and poverty, and the other is humility.

“Now it happened at this time Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census of the whole world should be taken. This census—the first—took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All were going, each to his own town, to be registered. So Joseph set out from the town of Nazareth in Galilee for Judea, to David's town called Bethlehem, since he was of David's house and line, in order to be registered together with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

“Now it happened that while they were there, the time came for her to have her child. She gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:1-7).

Our Lord came into the world with nothing and He's going to go out of the world also with nothing, except the wood of the Cross. In this, He wanted to teach us the very relative value of material things.

It makes a lot of sense to be light. Imagine after you die, in the following days or a week later, when your children or your family come to clean out your cabinet, or your wardrobe, or your office desk. What will they say? ‘Why did he not get rid of all of this rubbish, all these papers, a long time ago?’

From time to time, it's good to go through the things that we have or the things that we use and see: “Have I used this thing in the last twelve months?"

If we haven't used something in the last twelve months, we probably won't use it in the next twelve either. And that may be a sign that it's time to get rid of that thing.

Everything we have is a gift: the shoes we wear, the shirt on our back, the bed we lie down in, the IT items that we use on a daily basis—all these are gifts of God—the talents that He has given to us to use for a certain period of time, and then to pass on to other people so that they may use them.

Our Lord encourages us to have the mentality of an administrator or a manager, not an owner. Nothing is mine, everything belongs to God. Therefore I have to look after it, take care of it, put a bit of oil in it from time to time, repair it, keep it in good shape, make it last.

This is the poverty of a large and poor family. We have to try and have that mentality of the mother or father of a large and poor family, making things last, using things well, realizing the gift.

‘I don't own anything. God will ask me on the last day to account for all the things I have used and how I have used them—all the things He has given to me.’

There was an eight-year-old little girl once who asked her dad to start recycling. He laughed a little bit and said: “Why do you want me to recycle?”

She said: “Oh, so you can help me save the planet.” He laughed again a little bit and said, “Why do you want to save the planet?”

And she said: “Because that's where I keep all my stuff.”

All of us may have stuff, stuff that we keep, that possibly we're not using very much, haven't used in a period of time.

Christ never said it was bad to have things. He never condemned wealth; it’s not a sin to be rich. What He did condemn was the bad use of riches.

The rich man and Lazarus: the rich man feasted sumptuously every day and Lazarus lay at his gate with nothing, lying “to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table.” He had the dogs that licked his sores. … Then the rich man died and was buried in hell (Luke 16:19-22).

He wasn't in hell because he was rich. He was in hell because he didn't care about Lazarus.

There is a social dimension to property: to think how I can use it to help others, or the social dimension to wealth: how can I use the good things that God has given to me to help others to a maximum degree?

Lazarus was taken by the angels into heaven. Before there were the dogs, and now there are the angels.

A man told me once how he had a business that was moving, I think, oil around from island to island. He had a lot of trouble in his business. Creditors were banging on the door, and he had one headache after another.

One day he got a phone call. It was from the wife of one of his seamen who was on a boat someplace. But he told the secretary, "Tell her to call back this afternoon, I'm too busy.”

She called back in the afternoon and the reply was the same:”Tell her to call tomorrow.”

And this lady called the following day, and he told the secretary the same message: “I'm too tied up to talk to her.”

But when he had put the phone down for the third time, he realized: this lady has called three times; she must have a problem.

He asked the secretary to call her back, but she was calling from a public phone—it was the time before mobiles. So he asked the secretary to find out where she lived, and he got in the car and he went to pay her a visit.

It took him two hours to get across the town. Eventually, he found the area and he began to walk through a field.

She lived in a shanty area, a slum area. As he walked through the field, he said, it began to rain. He saw the conditions in which these people were living.

Suddenly it dawned on him that he was there in his office, feeling sorry for himself with all his professional problems. He realized, ‘These people have problems. I don't really have problems.’

He found the house. There was a hole in the roof, and the rain was coming in. The three-month-old baby had caught a chill and was blue in the face.

He got the baby to the hospital. He got in some metal sheets for the roof. He got in a supply of food. He fixed them up much better. He spent three hours there.

He said: “I went back to my office a happy man, thanking God for letting me see that I don't really have problems. Many other people have problems.”

It's a very good thing to bring children to visit families who have much less than we have, or to share their Christmas toys of last year or their birthday presents or their clothes, so that they learn to be generous.

Generosity is a beautiful gift, beautiful talent. A young person who is generous is a very wonderful talent to have.

A young person who is stingy is not so much a nice thing, but an old person who is stingy is much worse—somebody who hasn't learned to be generous with the passage of time.

Old age doesn't make us holy, doesn’t make us virtuous. A young person who is not generous is not a very nice thing, but an old person who is stingy—that's really the pits.

Somebody said once: “Wisdom sometimes comes with age, and sometimes age comes alone” (Oscar Wilde). You can say that about all of the virtues.

Sometimes generosity comes with age, but sometimes age also comes alone. We have to try and learn to be generous when we're young. Foster that spirit and give an example of generosity to people around us, especially to our family.

People should be surprised that we give so much when they know what we're earning. It's good to give a little above what we might be expected to give.

Spend a little less, and have a social consciousness, which means we think twice before we buy something or spend.

Do I really need this thing? Can I make better use of this money? A Christian conscience thinks twice, careful of luxurious spending.

It's a very good thing to have somebody that you can consult about these things, because you might be convinced that you need to make this trip, or buy this item, or get this latest product—and the reality might be quite different.

We can ask Our Lord for the grace to practice this virtue of detachment. It helps us to know the real value of things, the real value of money, which we might take a bit for granted.

I was giving a guard a lift one time and I asked him, “Will I leave you at this stop or another kilometer further on?”

He said, “If you could bring me to that other stage further on because that way I save ten shillings.”

It sort of brings home to you: ten shillings for some people is a lot of money. We need to be thinking like that; careful of those gifts that God has given to us.

There was a street kid once in Manila who used to sell cigarettes at a street corner. He didn't know how to manage his money and so he would give the money to a priest in the local parish. There was a parish run by Salesian Fathers, Don Bosco Parish.

Every day he would make twenty or thirty shillings from his selling of cigarettes, he would give it to the priest, and then he would come at the end of the day and ask for ten shillings to buy some rice.

One day he came, and he asked for sixty shillings. That was about everything that he had saved up so the priest asked him, “But why do you want sixty shillings?”

And he said, “You see, there's a lady who has given birth to a baby under the bridge and she has no milk for the baby. Milk costs sixty shillings a can, so I thought I would buy some milk for the baby.”

The priest was very moved. Here was this kid who had nothing in this world: a pair of slippers, a pair of shorts, and a T-shirt. He was an orphan, eight or nine years of age.

At the first sight of someone in need, he was willing to go and spend all those things that he had, the little treasure he had saved up.

How happy God must be when He sees a soul like that child!

The priest made that story his homily at all the Sunday Masses the following Sunday, and a wealthy lady in the congregation offered to pay for his education, so he got an education.

Seize the opportunities to be generous. Don’t let them pass.

Our Lord said: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where thieves and robbers break in and steal, dust and moth consume. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (cf. Matt. 6:19-20).

Every day we have the opportunity to store up for ourselves treasures in heaven.

I was on duty one night in a 450-bed hospital, and beside us there was a private nursing home run by the consultants. Normally we didn't get called over there, but one night they needed a doctor and I got called over.

I was brought into the room where there was a man dying of cancer. He was going to die that night. He was fairly young, early 50s. His family were around his bed.

When I came in, he asked them to leave, and then he took a hold of my wrist. His hand was already cold and clammy. Death had already begun to creep into his body.

He looked at me with a look of terror in his eyes and said, “Doctor, don't let me die.”

I think it was one of the most awful things I've seen in my life. A man at the hour of his death in such terror. He was well to do. He was in the best nursing home in the country, but here he was, at the moment of his death, with nothing. All his treasures were in this world.

That brought home to you the depth of those words of Our Lord: “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, not here on earth”—the wisdom of that.

Every so often we need little reminders about what is truly important, so that we live a detachment, as Our Lord has encouraged us to do.

“Foxes have dens and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matt. 8:20).

To the rich young man, He said, “Go, sell all that you have, give to the poor, then come follow me and you will have treasures in heaven.”

We're told the rich young man “... went away sad because he had great possessions” (Matt. 19:21-22).

It's one of the saddest stories in the whole of the New Testament. Here was this young person with so much promise, so much potential. He kept all the virtues since his youth.

But Our Lord places before him that astonishing challenge: “Go, sell all that you have.”

That's the astonishing challenge that Our Lord places in front of each one of us. We have the opportunity to respond well.

“He went away sad” because he had great possessions. He was too attached to the things that he had.

He asked, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Matt. 19:16). It was a good question. He didn't say, "How do I buy it? Who do I bribe?"

“What must I do?” Our Lord looked into his heart, and He saw a stain in his heart, a shadow there, so He challenged him. He threw down the gauntlet.

Christ wants our whole heart. He wants us to give everything, not to be stuck in things of this world.

The devil can have a hold on us: a hold on us through envy, through jealousy.

Envy is sadness of the good of another. ‘Other people have what I don't have.’

Whenever we get those sentiments, we have to try and thank God for the good things that we have. We see other people's blessings, but we don't see their crosses.

Every day of our life, we can fill our day with acts of thanksgiving for the good things: for our sight, for our hearing, the fact that we have two arms and two legs. Even if one joint one day is giving us a little bit of trouble, we'll thank God that the other thirty-one seem to be functioning okay.

We don't let the devil keep us attached to things, or to be thinking like everybody else is thinking; or focused on what they have, or where they're going, or what they're doing.

If God has given me this thing, He wants me to have it. If He hasn't given it to me, then He doesn't want me or need me to have it.

If Our Lord allows you to pass through situations of real need, it may be that God is shaping your soul in those moments, more than in any other moment. Teaching you the real value of things. Leading you into Bethlehem. Helping you to take your Christian vocation a little more seriously.

If, on some occasion, you are able to spend a little more, try and make a special contribution to the Church, to the poor, to somebody who needs it.

Thank God in a concrete way for the ways that He may have blessed you and ask Him for the grace to learn how to be content with what you have.

St. Josemaría in The Way says, “Be content with what enables you to live a simple and sober life” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 631).

How many people do you know are content? It's not a common thing, and yet it's a great gift to learn how to be content with what God has given to me.

The biggest lie on the planet is that when I get what I want, I will be happy. Fulton Sheen says, “When we get what we want, very often we hate it.”

Living this virtue of detachment means exchanging lower things for higher things: the spiritual things which can give us great spiritual consolations.

It may be that God does not want to give us too many material consolations in this world, but He may want to give us many spiritual consolations—to know the real value of things because they belong to God.

Thank you, Lord, for the things you have given to me. Help me to grow in that mentality of the administrator. Help me to be attentive to any signs of attachment that may be there.

What are the tell-tale signs of attachment? If we are anxious because, obsessed with, worried about, restless due to... Anxious because I haven't yet heard the football results on a Saturday evening. Obsessed with the fact that my food has to be cooked in this particular type of way. Worried about somebody else in the office that has got a job that I didn't get. Restless due to the fact that somebody has sat in my chair.

We can examine our conscience and see if some little attachments have crept into our lives in clothes, in books, in computers, in our plans for rest.

If on some occasion we find we're lacking something, we have to try and accept that situation, not complain. Nobody likes to listen to complaints.

A guy told me once how a friend of his died at the age of 42 the previous week. He said, “You know, that friend of mine was always complaining. The one thing I've learnt from his death is not to spend my last breath grumbling.”

People die as they have lived, and so we have to try and live each day as if it was our last. Last-minute conversions are really rare.

It may be that God wants to give us many great interior joys from the way that we practice this virtue so that we don't get used to things, or luxuries, or comfort.

Occasionally we have to jump out of our comfort, complicate our life a little bit and that of our family, declare war on the culture of waste because we realize the concrete value of things—that this thing might be of use to somebody else.

We see a great detachment in the Holy Family when they leave Nazareth. We can't imagine Our Lady piling up the donkey with all sorts of paraphernalia, saying, “This was a wedding present from my aunt. I have to go with it.”

Or as they go off in the donkey into the night, we can't imagine Our Lady looking back nostalgically over her shoulder, saying, “I should have stayed with my mother.”

They're looking to the future. They leave everything behind.

In Bethlehem, they're told to go to Egypt and “remain there until I tell you” (Matt. 2:13).

Strange place, strange country, something they're not used to, but yet there's a great acceptance of the plans of God in their life.

“If this is your will, Lord, then it's my will also” (cf. J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 762). Help me to accept that will in all sorts of ways.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3).

We might have a lot of material things in this world, but we could be very detached from them. That’s poverty of spirit—not putting our trust in them or thinking we're better than others because we have this, and other people don't.

“Where your treasure is,” says Scripture, “there your heart is also” (Matt. 6:21).

Where's my treasure? Is my treasure in the spiritual things, in God, in the apostolate, in the service that God has called me to practice?

St. Josemaría used to say that if we live the virtue of poverty badly, “the whole of our interior life goes badly” because it means our treasure is in the things of this earth (Salvador Bernal, Msgr. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer: A Profile of the Founder of Opus Dei).

Our Lord wants a certain austerity in our life. We know how to do without things.

When we practice that virtue, it opens the eyes of young people. They see that we don't take things for granted and we're not super immersed in the things of this world. Very often the reality of our Christian dedication is shown there.

In The Way, it says: “You don't love poverty if you don't love what poverty brings with it” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 637).

It means not complaining when the food isn't as we would like it, or our plans don't work out, or we're not able to have this compensation or this comfort. We love the consequences of poverty.

The life of Joseph and Mary shows us these things all the time.

We can ask Our Lady, who lived in ardent detachment in everything, that she might teach us to live this virtue in an ever more refined way, to open our eyes to the little symptoms of detachment, and to put this virtue into practice a little better, so that we can imitate the Holy Family in very concrete ways.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

OLV