Evangelical Poverty
God is the only giver and the owner of everything, and we want to depend on Him for everything. Evangelical poverty leads us to a voluntary acceptance of this dependence. We discover that God is our only wealth and we expect everything from Him. Our hearts are designed for God and exclusively for Him and that is why neither material goods nor psychological reliance, nor even spiritual goods – nobody and nothing – can satisfy the hunger of our souls.
We keep the right to our earnings and to private ownership. However, by the vow of poverty we want to be dependent and limited in using them. Evangelical poverty teaches us generosity towards God and towards our neighbours.
Everything we have and are, our material goods, time, talents, and skills, without being enslaved to these goods, we want to use for God’s glory and for the good of people.
Even before being a service on behalf of the poor, evangelical poverty is a value in itself, since it recalls the first of the Beatitudes in the imitation of the poor Christ.Its primary meaning, in fact, is to attest that God is the true wealth of the human heart. Precisely for this reason evangelical poverty forcefully challenges the idolatry of money, making a prophetic appeal as it were to society, which in so many parts of the developed world risks losing the sense of proportion and the very meaning of things. (Vita Consecrata, 90)
Mother of Great Abandonment, Humble Servant of the Lord, I give myself to you without reservation
– so that I will accept with gratitude both abundance and lack.