From Fr Giovanni
These are days during which I’m getting ready to move from the parish. Moving is never easy, because moving is a change and a break in our life. There is a before and after, and we know our life after is going to be different from our life before. Moving involves packing, and packing forces us to choose what I am going to take with me and what I am going to leave behind.
Sometimes the choice is easy: that dinner jacket I haven’t used in the last two years and has somehow grown too tight is an obvious candidate for the charity shop. Sometimes the choice is not easy — like in the case of that cup which has been sitting at the back of the cupboard for the last eight years, the existence of which I had simply forgotten. Still, it was a present; giving it away feels like a betrayal of the memory of the person who gave it.
In several gospel passages Jesus suggests that his followers should somehow detach from material goods. A couple of weeks ago we read how Jesus sent out his disciples to announce the coming of the Kingdom, and enjoined them to bring no money-bag, no tunic, no knapsack. In another passage Jesus reminded his disciples that ‘foxes have holes, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’
In the Acts of the Apostles we read how the early Christians shared all their belongings for the good of the Church. As Christians increased in number, this model of poverty ceased to be viable for the majority of the population. In his Introduction to the Devout Life, St Francis de Sales stated quite clearly that it would be inappropriate for a father with children to choose to live in poverty in the same way as the Franciscans.
What is a viable model of poverty for us, who aren’t Franciscans? The answer is holy detachment. If we have possessions, we’ve only to keep in mind that our happiness doesn’t depend on them, but on God; if we don’t have them, we’ve to remember that God is our loving Father and, in His providence, we will never lack what we need for our human flourishing. Only when we are really detached from human goods, are we free, to be truthful disciples of Christ.
