Christian poverty more than just detachment from things

by Fr. Roy Cimagala

Chaplain

Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)

Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com

THAT gospel episode where Christ praised a poor widow for giving all that she had to live on to the treasury of the temple (cfr. Lk 21,1-4) graphically reminds us that Christian poverty, which is what is required for true Christian love to reign in our hearts, is not so much a matter of how much, in terms of money and quantity, we are willing to be detached from as detaching ourselves from our very own selves, giving everything to God.

It’s actually the best deal that we can have, since as Christ said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to have his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” (Mt 16,24-25)

This is divine wisdom which we have to learn to live by. Moreover, it is something which we have to learn how to convince others, especially the young ones who are exposed today to so much materialism and egotistic ways, to believe in it.

This will, indeed, take a lot of time and effort, especially in the area of how to make this divine wisdom attractive and doable. In this regard, we have to learn to present Christ the way Christ presented himself to the people of his time.

He adapted himself to how the people were. He, of course, as St. Paul said, emptied himself by becoming man and went to the extent of offering his life on the cross, just to identify himself completely with us. (cfr. Phil 2,6-8)

In this preaching, he used literary devices, like the parables, so as to elicit interest and eventual understanding and appreciation of the redemptive messages and lessons he wanted to impart to the people.

This is something that we, in our own time with our distinctive cultures and mindsets, should also learn to do. We can only show and give Christ to others, we can only make Christ’s redemptive messages and lessons appreciated by us, if we learn how to connect the real Christ, both in spirit and in the flesh, and not a disembodied Christ, to the people of today.

The effort required here involves emptying ourselves so as to embody the real Christ in ourselves in the context of today’s world with all the good and the bad that it now has. That is why we always need to detach ourselves not only from things but also, and more importantly, from our own selves, so we can be filled with Christ’s spirit and enabled to show Christ in the flesh.

But given our human condition which allows us to learn things in stages, we have to understand that everyday we have to conquer our tendency to fall into some earthly attachments so that we can say we are giving ourselves more and more to God until we give ourselves completely to him.

This will require a constant reminder and self-reassurance that it is all worthwhile to give and to lose everything for God because we will in fact gain a lot more than what we give. Let’s always remember Christ telling us “to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.” (Mt 6,33)

We have to learn to let go of our possessions, our preferences, our opinions, etc., until we can say that we are letting go of our whole selves so as to give everything to God, and with God we are assured that we can have everything that is truly important to us!