QUOTATION: Charity and Poverty

We would do well to ask ourselves what we can give up in order to help and enrich others by our own poverty. Let us not forget that real poverty hurts: no self-denial is real without this dimension of penance. I distrust a charity that costs nothing and does not hurt.

--Pope Francis Lenten message 2014, December 26, 2013.

QUOTATION: Worldly Poverty, Wealth in Christ

To the world, it’s seem foolish that we delight in poor food, that we relish rough and insipid bulgur (wheat); possess only three sets of habits made of coarse cloth or old soutanes (cassocks) mend and patch them, take great care of them and refuse to have extra; enjoy walking in any shape and color of shoes; bathe with just a bucket of water in small bathing rooms; sweat and perspire but refuse to have a fan; go hungry and thirsty but refuse to eat in the houses of the people; refuse to have radios or gramophones, which could be relaxing to the racked nerves after the whole day’s hard toil; walk distances in the rain and hot summer sun, or go cycling, travel by second-class tram, or third class overcrowded trains; sleep on hard beds, giving up soft and thick mattresses which would be soothing to the aching bodies after the whole day’s hard work; kneel on the rough and thin carpets in the chapel, giving up soft and thick ones; delight in lying in the common wards in the hospital among the poor of Christ, when we could easily have private cabins; work like coolies at home and outside when we could easily employ servants and do only the light jobs; relish cleaning the toilets and dirt as though that was the most beautiful job in the world and call it a tribute to God. To some we are wasting our precious life and burying our talents. Yes, our lives are utterly wasted if we use only the light of reason. Our life has no meaning unless we look at Christ in his poverty. Our beautiful work with and for the poor is a privilege and a gift for us. I think that if we go to the poor with that love, with only the desire to give God to them, to bring the joy of Christ (which is our strength) into their homes, if they look at us and see Jesus and his love and compassion in us, I think the world will soon be full of peace and love.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, No Greater Love.

QUOTATION: Christ's Poverty

It decreed by God that the edict of Caesar should come forth; namely, that his Son should not only be born poor, but the poorest of men, causing him to be born away from his own house, in a cave which was inhabited only by animals. Other poor people, who are born in their own houses, have certainly more comforts in the way of clothes, of fire, and the assistance of persons who lend their aid, even if it is out of compassion. What son of a poor person was ever born in a stable? In a stable only beasts are born.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ

QUOTATION: Basic Training

There are those who assert that the medical training of the Missionaries of Charity is too rudimentary for people who care for the seriously ill. I know that. Our medical training is limited, but we try to offer assistance and care to those who, in most cases, have no one to give them even the most basic medical care. 

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, No Greater Love

QUOTATION: How to Have Enough

There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Self-Chosen Poverty

Rigorous poverty is our safeguard. We do not want, as has been the case with other religious orders throughout history, to begin serving the poor and then gradually move towards serving the rich. In order for us to understand and to be able to help those who lack everything, we have to live as they live. The difference lies only in the fact that those we aid are poor by force, whereas we are poor by choice.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, No Greater Love.

QUOTATION: Poverty

No one should commend poverty, save the poor.

--St. Bernard, Sermons

QUOTATION: Poverty

Poverty is an odious blessing.

--Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale

QUOTATION: Fasting

We have to experience the profundity of not placing so much importance on the food with which we deprive ourselves as on the food that we make available to the hungry person through our privations. May our voluntary fast be what prevents so many involuntary fasts among the poor.  Let us choose to fast so that no one else is forced to.

--Pope Francis (Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio), Lenten Gesture of Solidarity, 2011

QUOTATION: To Fast is to Love

One who does not fast for the poor is cheating God. To fast is to love.  Our voluntary fasting should help prevent the obligatory fasts of the poor. Let us fast so that no one else is forced to.

--Pope Francis (Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio), Lenten Message, Ash Wednesday, 2009

QUOTATION: How Not to Fight Poverty

The extermination of millions of unborn children, in the name of the fight against poverty, actually constitutes the destruction of the poorest of all human beings.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Message for the World Day of Peace, 2008

QUOTATION: Desire Nothing, Refuse Nothing

Engrave then on your memory these two precious maxims, which I have already so often recommended to you: Desire nothing, refuse nothing. Look upon the little Jesus in the crib; He receives poverty, nakedness, the society of beasts, the inclemency of the weather, and all that His Father permits to happen to Him. It is not written that He ever reached out His hands to be lifted up into the bosom of His Mother. He abandoned Himself entirely to her care and her foresight. He did not refuse the little comforts she gave Him, and received the services of St. Joseph, the adorations and presents of the shepherds and the kings, all with a holy equanimity. We ought to act in like manner, and, after the example of Our Divine Saviour, neither ask any thing nor refuse any thing, but be equally willing to suffer and to receive whatever the Providence of God may permit to befall us.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts

QUOTATION: Jesus' Poverty

To expiate these evils of cupidity, Our Lord came poor of poor parents. He worked for His daily bread, He received assist ance from charity, He died poor, owning not even the winding-sheet for His burial. He lived without support, without protectors. He never had any position, but went here and there, as the Spirit urged Him, preaching to all, sometimes followed, sometimes abandoned. He could say of Himself " The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve."

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Our Spiritual Poverty

If we knew the depth of our poverty, we would not be at all surprised by our falls, but rather astonished, and we would thank God, after sinning, for not allowing us to fall even deeper and still more frequently.

--St. Maximillian Kolbe

QUOTATION: Love of Poverty

Remember also that it is not poverty but the love of poverty which is a virtue. Hence all who voluntarily forsake wealth bear a striking resemblance to Our Saviour, who, being rich with the riches of God, became poor for love of us. They who are compelled to live in poverty, but bear it with patience, never coveting the wealth which is denied them, convert their necessity into a meritorious virtue. As the poor by their poverty conform themselves to Jesus Christ, so the rich by their alms can conform their hearts to the merciful Heart of this Divine Model, who in His lowly crib received not only the shepherds with their simple tokens of affection, but also the wise and powerful men of the East, who came to lay at His feet the treasures of their gold and frankincense and myrrh.

--Louis de Granada, The Sinner's Guide

QUOTATION: Blaming the Government

When Jesus comes to judge us, He will say to some, "Because I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me." And they will ask the Lord "When did I do that? I don't remember." And He will respond. "Everytime you helped the poor, you helped me." But He will also say to others, "Go away, because I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat." And He will also condemn us for the sin of blaming the government for poverty, when it is a responsibility we must all assume to the extent we can.

--Pope Francis, Pope Francis: His Life in His Own Words

QUOTATION: Christ's Poverty

Man's sin consists in this that he so cleaves to bodily goods that he neglects what is good spiritually. It was therefore necessary for the Son of God to show this in the humanity he had taken, through all he did and suffered, so that men should repute temporal things, whether good or evil, as nothing, for otherwise, hindered by an exaggerated affection for them, they would be less devoted to spiritual things.

Christ therefore chose poor people for his parents, people nevertheless perfect in virtue, so that none of us should glory in the mere rank or wealth of our parents.

He led the life of a poor man, to teach us to set no store by wealth.

He lived the life of an ordinary man, without any rank, to wean men from an undue desire for honours.

Toil, thirst, hunger, the aches of the body, all these he endured, to encourage men, whom pleasures and delights attract, not to be deterred from virtue by the austerity a good life entails.

He went so far as to endure even death, lest the fear of death might at any time tempt man to abandon the truth. And lest any of us might dread to die even a shameful death for the truth, he chose to die by the most accursed death of all, by crucifixion.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Poverty

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta 

QUOTATION: Stewardship

There is another passage in the same Gospel of St. Luke, which may be considered as a kind of commentary on the unjust steward: "There was a certain rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and feasted sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, who lay at his gate, full of sores. Desiring to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table, and no one did give him; moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell." This Dives was certainly one of those who supposed he was master of his own money, and not a steward under God; and therefore he imagined not that he offended against God, when he was clothed in purple and linen, and feasted sumptuously every day, and had his dogs, and his buffoons, etc. For he perhaps said within himself: " I spend my own money, I do no injury to any one, I violate not the laws of God, I do not blaspheme nor swear, I observe the sabbath, I honour my parents, I do not kill, nor commit adultery, nor steal, nor bear false witness, nor do I covet my neighbour’s wife, or anything else." But if such was the case, why was he buried in hell? why tormented in the fire? We must then acknowledge that all those are deceived who suppose they are the "absolute" masters of their money; for if Dives had any more grievous sins to answer for, the Holy Scripture would certainly have mentioned them. But since nothing more has been added, we are given to understand that the superfluous adornment of his body with costly garments, and his daily magnificent banquets, and the multitude of his servants and dogs, whilst he had no compassion for the poor, was a sufficient cause of his condemnation to eternal torments.

--St. Robert Bellarmine, The Art of Dying Well

QUOTATION: Alms

Give alms from your just earnings; you cannot bribe Christ your judge.

--St. Augustine