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POVERTY:
THE GENEROSITY OF THE GRACIOUS GOD
Poverty
is the vow for which it is hardest to find words that
ring true, and this is for two reasons. Those brothers
and sisters who have come closest to being really poor
are often the most reticent to talk about it. They know
how much of what we say about poverty and about the
"option for the poor" is empty rhetoric. they
know just how terrible are the lives of the poor, often
without hope, with the daily, grinding violence, the
boredom, the insecurity and the dependence. Those of
us who have seen, even from afar, what poverty is like
are usually suspicious of easy words. Can we ever really
know ourselves what it means to live that degradation,
insecurity and hopelessness?
A
second reason that it is so hard to write about poverty
is that what it means to be poor is so different from
one society to another, depending upon the nature of
family ties, the type of economy, the social provisions
made by the State and so on. Poverty means one thing
in India, where there is a long tradition of the holy
beggar, another in Africa where in most cultures riches
are seen as God's blessing, and yet another in the consumerist
culture of the West. What it means for us to take a
vow of poverty is more culturally determined than for
obedience or chastity. The size and location of the
community, the apostolates of the brethren, impose different
constraints that should make us wary of too easy judgments
upon how well others are living this vow.
It
is, like all the vows, in the first place, a means.
It offers us the freedom to go anywhere and preach.
You cannot be a wandering preacher if you must transport
all your furniture every time you move. In the Bull
Cum Spiritus Fervore of 1217 Honorius III wrote that
Dominic and his brethren:
"in the fervour of the spirit that animated them,
cast off the burden of the riches of this world and
being shod with zeal to propagate the gospel had resolved
to exercise the office of preaching in the humble state
of voluntary poverty, exposing themselves to numberless
sufferings and dangers for the salvation of others"
9
We
are invited to give up not merely wealth to follow Christ,
but "brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers
for my sake". The renunciation that gives us freedom
implies a radical break with our family ties as well,
a disinheritance. The consequences of this need to be
thought out with great delicacy since the nature of
the family has changed in many societies. Our families
today are often marked by divorce and remarriage, and
in some societies our brothers and sisters are increasingly
likely to be only children. We do have real obligations
to our parents but how are these to be reconciled with
the radical self-gift that we have made of our lives
to the preaching of the gospel through our vows in the
Order? It is paradoxical that it is often the members
of the family who are in religious vows who are considered
to be "free" to help look after aged or ill
parents. We will need to reflect on this with great
sensitivity.
The
vow of poverty offers us freedom to give ourselves without
reservation to the preaching of the gospel but it is
not just a means in a narrow and utilitarian sense.
Like the other vows it is, as Thomas wrote, ordered
towards caritas, the love that is the very life of God.
How can we live it so that we can talk about God with
authority?
One
way to answer this would be to explore how poverty touches
fundamental aspects of that sacrament of love which
is the Eucharist. For the Eucharist is the sacrament
of unity which poverty destroys; it is the sacrament
of vulnerability, which the poor endure; it is the moment
of gift, which our culture of consumption resists. To
ask how we may and should be poor, is to ask how we
should live eucharistically.
1)
Invisibility
On
the night before he died Jesus gathered the disciples
around the table to celebrate the new covenant. It was
the birth of a home in which all might belong, since
he embraced all that might destroy human community:
betrayal, denial, even death. The scandal of poverty
is that it rips apart what Christ has made one. Poverty
is not just an economic condition, the lack of food
and clothing or employment. It tears apart the human
family. It alienates us from our sisters and brothers.
Lazarus at the door of the rich man's house is not merely
excluded from sharing his food but from sitting at his
table. The unbridgeable abyss that separates them after
death merely reveals what had been the case during their
lifetimes. In our world today the rift between rich
and poor countries, and within these countries themselves,
is becoming ever more acute. Even within the rich countries
of the European Community there are almost twenty million
unemployed. The body of Christ is dismembered.
The
voluntary poverty that we vow has value not because
it is in any sense good to be poor. Poverty is terrible.
It matters only if it is a reaching out across the boundaries
that separate human beings from each other, a presence
with our separated brothers and sisters. What possible
authority could our words about our unity in Christ
have if we do not dare to make this journey? During
the last year I have seen how much our sisters have
to teach the brethren, by their quiet presence among
the poor in so many parts of the world. They know the
importance of just being there as a sign of the Kingdom.
The
Eucharist is the foundation of the universal human home.
Would a poor person feel at home and welcomed in our
communities? Would they feel that their dignity was
respected? Or might they feel intimidated and small?
Do our buildings attract or repel? One of the ways that
the poor are removed from the human community is by
becoming invisible and inaudible. They disappear, the
desaparecidos, like Lazarus at the door of the rich
man. When one arrives at Calcutta Railway Station, the
beggars rush up and thrust their deformities at one.
They demand to be seen, to be visible. Do we dare to
look for fear of what we might see, a brother or a sister?
2)
Vulnerability
In
the Last Supper Christ embraced his suffering and his
death. He accepted the ultimate vulnerability of being
human, liability to be wounded and killed. Our vow of
poverty surely invites us to embrace our human vulnerability.
In the Bull of Honorius III that I quoted above, Dominic
and the brethren are praised not merely for being poor
but for "exposing themselves to numberless sufferings
and dangers for the salvation of others". In what
sense do we ever share even a glimpse of the vulnerability
of the poor?
How
ever little we eat, for us there is always an escape
route if we can endure it no more. The Order will not
let us die of hunger. Yet I have met brothers and sisters
who have dared to go as far as they can, for example
in one of the most violent barrios of Caracas. They
endure the danger and exhaustion of living every day
in a world where violence is all pervasive. That is
a real vulnerability which could cost them their lives.
I think of our brothers and sisters in Haiti, whose
brave stand for justice puts their life at risk. In
Algeria and Cairo our brothers choose to remain, despite
all the dangers, as a sign of their hope for reconciliation
between Christians and Muslims. In Guatemala our indigenous
sisters wear clothes of their own people, so that they
may share their daily humiliation. If they wore a traditional
habit they would be insulated from that. Not all of
us are called to this degree of exposure. There are
different tasks within the Order. But we can support
them, listen to them and learn from them. The seedbed
of our theology is their experience.
This
call of Christ to vulnerability must put questions as
to how we live the vow of poverty together. Do we dare
even live the vulnerability which is presupposed by
the common life? Do we really live out of the common
purse? Do we live the insecurity of giving to the community
all that we receive, exposed to the risk that they might
not give us all that we think we need? How can we speak
of the Christ who put himself into our hands, if we
do not? Are our communities divided into financial classes?
Are there some who have access to more money than others?
Is there a real sharing of wealth between the communities
of a Provinces, or between Provinces?
3)
Gift
At
the heart of our lives is the celebration of that moment
of utter vulnerability and generosity, when Jesus took
bread and broke it and gave it to his disciples saying
"Take and eat, this is my body, given to you."
At the centre of the gospel is a moment of pure gift.
This is where the caritas which is the life of God becomes
most tangible. It is a generosity that our society finds
hard to grasp, for it is a market in which everything
is to bought and sold. What sense can it make of the
God who shouts out "Come to me all you who are
thirsty and I will give you food without price."
All human societies have markets, the buying and selling
and exchange of goods. Western society differs in being
a market. It is the fundamental model that dominates
and forms our conception of society, of politics and
even of each other. Everything is for sale. The infinite
fertility of nature, the land, water have become commodities.
Even we human beings are on the "labour market".
This culture of consumerism threatens to engulf the
whole world, and it claims to do so in the name of freedom,
but it locks us in a world where nothing is free. Even
when we become aware of the distress of the poor and
seek to respond, so often caritas has been monetarised
into "charity", in which the gift of money
is substituted for the sharing of life.
How
can we be preachers of the gracious and generous God,
who gives us his life, if we are caught up in this all-pervasive
culture? One of the most radical demands of the vow
of poverty is surely that we so live in simplicity to
see the world differently and gain some glimpse of the
utterly gracious God. The lives of our communities should
be marked by a simplicity which helps liberate us from
the illusory promises of our culture of consummation,
and from "the domination of wealth" (LCO 31.I).
The world looks different from the back of a Mercedes
than it does from the seat of a bicycle. Jordan of Saxony
said that Dominic was "a true lover of poverty",
perhaps not because poverty is in itself lovable but
because it can disclose to us our deepest desires. I
have often been struck by the joyfulness and spontaneity
of our brothers and sisters who live in simplicity and
poverty.
In
some parts of the Order the very language that we use
when describing our common life suggests that we should
be attentive to the dangers of absorbing the values
of the world of business. The brethren or sisters become
"personnel"; we have "personnel boards";
the role of a superior becomes that of "management"
or "administration", and we study "management
techniques". Can one imagine Dominic as the first
President of the Order of Preachers Incorporated? How
often does a Provincial prevent a brother from seeking
new and creative ways of preaching and teaching because
the Province would suffer financially?
The
buildings in which we live are gifts. Do we live in
them and treat them with gratitude? Do we have a responsible
attitude to what we are given, for the fabric of our
buildings, for what we receive? Do we need the buildings
that we have? Could our buildings be better used? Bursars
often have a thankless task, even though they have a
vital role in helping us to live with the responsibility
that we owe to those who are generous to us.
CHASTITY:
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD
We
have an urgent need in the Order to think together about
the meaning of the vow of Chastity. It touches issues
central to our humanity: our sexuality, our bodiliness,
our need to express and receive affection, and yet frequently
we fear to talk. So often it is an area in which we
struggle alone, afraid of judgement or incomprehension.
It may be useful to prepare a further letter on this
subject in the future.
It
is of course true that this vow is, like the others,
a means. It gives us the freedom to preach, the mobility
to respond to the needs of the Order. But with this
vow it is perhaps especially important that it is not
merely endured as a grim necessity. Unless we can learn,
perhaps through much time and suffering, to embrace
it positively, then it can poison our lives. And we
can do so because it is, like all the vows, ordered
towards caritas, towards that love which is the very
life of God. It is a particular way of loving. If it
is not that, then it will lead us to frustration and
sterility.
The
first sin against chastity is a failure to love. It
was said of Dominic that "since he loved all, he
was loved by all."10 What is at issue, yet again,
is the authority of our preaching. How can we speak
of the God of love if that is not a mystery that we
live? If we do so, then it will ask of us death and
resurrection The temptation is to take flight. One common
escape route is activism, to lose ourselves in hectic
work, even good and important work, so as to flee the
solitude. We may even tempted to flee from the fact
of our sexuality, our bodiliness. Yet the Order was
born precisely in the struggle against such dualism.
Dominic was the one who preached against the division
of body and soul, spirit and matter. It remains a modern
temptation. Much of modern culture is deeply dualistic.
Pornography, which appears to delight in sexuality,
is in reality a flight from it, a refusal of that vulnerability
that human relationship demands. The voyeur keeps his
distance, invulnerable and in control, afraid.
It
is our corporeality that is blessed and made holy in
the Incarnation. If we are to be preachers of the Word
become flesh, then we cannot deny or forget what we
are. Do we care for the bodies of our brethren, making
sure that they have enough food, tend them when they
are sick, be tender to them when they are old? When
Bede Jarrett wrote to encourage a young Benedictine
who was enduring the first sufferings of friendship,
he wrote:
"I am glad because I think your temptation has
been towards Puritanism, a narrowness, a certain inhumanity.
Your tendency was almost towards the denial of the hallowing
of matter. You were in love with the Lord, but not properly
with the Incarnation. You were really afraid."
11
The
basis of our chastity can never be fear, fear of our
sexuality, fear of our bodiliness, fear of people of
the other sex. Fear is never a good foundation for religious
life. For the God who drew near to us dared to become
flesh and blood, even though it led to crucifixion.
Ultimately this vow demands of us that we follow where
God has gone before. Our God has become human, and invites
us to do so as well.
St.
Thomas Aquinas makes the startling claim that our relationship
with God is one of friendship, amicitia. The good news
that we preach is that we share in the infinite mystery
of the friendship of Father and Son which is the Spirit.
And indeed Thomas argues that the ''evangelical counsels"
are the counsels offered by Christ in friendship.12
One way that we live that friendship is the vow of chastity.
To help us reflect upon what it demands of us, let us
briefly reflect upon two aspect of that Trinitarian
love. It is utterly generous and unpossessive, and it
is the love between equals.
1)
An unpossessive love
It
is that utterly generous and unpossessive love by which
the Father gives all that He is to the Son, including
his divinity. It is not a sentiment or a feeling, but
the love that grants the Son being. All human love,
of married people or religious, should seek to live
and share in this mystery, in its unpossessive generosity.
We
must be completely unambiguous as to what this loving
demands of us who are vowed to chastity. It means not
just that we do not marry but that we abstain from sexual
activity. It asks of us a real and clear renunciation,
an asceticism. If we pretend otherwise and willingly
accept compromises, then we enter upon a path that may
be ultimately impossible to sustain and cause us and
others terrible unhappiness.
The
first thing that we are asked to do is to believe that
the vow of chastity really can be a way of loving, that
though we may pass through moments of frustration and
desolation, it is a path that can lead to our flourishing
as affectionate, whole human beings. The older members
of our community are often signs of hope for us. We
meet men and women who have passed through the trials
of chastity, and emerged into the liberty of those who
can love freely. They can be for us signs that with
God nothing is impossible.
The
entry to this free and unpossessive love will take time.
We may endure failures and discouragement on the way.
Now that many people enter the Order when they are older,
having had sexual experience, then we must not think
of it so much as an innocence that we may lose but an
integrity of heart into which we may grow. Even moments
of failure may, in the grace of God, belong to the path
by which we mature, for "we know that in everything
God works for good with those who love him". (Romans
8:28)
Our
communities should be places in which we must give each
other courage when one's heart hesitates, forgiveness
when one fails and truthfulness when one is tempted
by self-deceit. We must believe in the goodness of our
brothers or sisters when they ceased to believe it of
themselves. Nothing is more poisonous than self-despising
As Damian Byrne wrote in his letter on 'The Common Life":
"While the deepest sanctuary of our hearts is given
to God - we have other needs. He has made us so that
a large area of our life is accessible to others and
is needed by others. Each one of us needs to experience
the genuine interest of the other members of the community,
their affection, esteem and fellowship ... Life together
means breaking the bread of our minds and hearts with
each other. If religious do not find this in their communities
- then they will seek it elsewhere."
Sometimes
the passage to real freedom and integrity of heart will
demand that we pass through the valley of death, that
we find ourselves faced only, it may seem, with sterility
and frustration. Is it really possible to make this
journey without prayer? There is first of all the prayer
that we share with the community, the daily prayer that
is fundamental to our lives. But there is also the silent
and private prayer, that brings us face to face with
God, in moments of unavoidable truth and astonishing
mercy. Here one can learn to hope. Dominic himself would
sometimes, when he walked, invite the brethren to go
ahead so that he could be alone to pray and in an early
version of the Constitutions Dominic said that the novice
master should teach his novices to pray in silence.13
Our nuns have much to teach the brethren about the value
of prayer in silence.
2)
The love that gives equality
Finally,
the love that is at the heart of God is utterly fertile.
It is generative, creative of all that is. What we struggle
with in chastity is not just the need for affection
but the desire to beget, to bring to birth. Our care
for each other must surely include an attentiveness
to the creativity that each one of us has, and which
our lives as Dominicans should liberate for the gospel.
This may be the creativity of a brother or sister bringing
a community into being in a parish, or the intellectual
labour of a theologian, or the prenovices in El Salvador
performing spontaneous theatre. Our chastity must never
be sterile.
The
love that is God is so fertile as to create equality.
The Trinity is without domination or manipulation. It
is not patronising or condescending. This is the love
that our vow of chastity invites us to live and preach.
As Thomas wrote, friendship finds or creates equality.14
The fraternity of our Dominican tradition, the democratic
form of government in which we delight, expresses not
just a way of organising our lives and taking decisions,
but expresses something of the mystery of the life of
God. That the brethren are known as the Ordo fratrum
praedicatorum embodies what it is that we preach, the
mystery of that love of perfect equality that is the
Trinity.
This
should characterize all our relationships. The Dominican
Family, with its recognition of each other's dignity,
and the equality of all members of the family belongs
to our living this vow well. The relationship between
sisters and brothers, religious and laity, should also
be a 'holy preaching'. Even our search for a more just
world, in which the dignity of every human being will
be respected, is not merely a moral imperative, but
an expression of the mystery of the love that is the
life of the Trinity which we are called to embody.
Conclusion
When
Dominic used to walk through villages where his life
was threatened by the Albigensians, he used to sing
loudly so that everyone knew that he was there. The
vows only have any value if they liberate us for the
mission of the Order with some of Dominic's courage
and joy. They should not be a heavy burden to weight
us down, but grant us a freedom to walk lightly as we
go to new places to do new things. What I have written
in this letter gives only a very inadequate expression
of how this may be so. I hope that together we may build
a shared vision of our life as Dominicans, vowed to
mission, that may strengthen us on the journey and free
us to sing. 
END NOTES
1
eg. 2a2ae q184 a3
2 Jordan of Saxony,Libellus 64
3 ST. 2a 2ae q.186 a.6 ad2
4 Herbert McCabe OP, God Matters London 1987
5 "Pursuing Communion in Government: Role of the
Community Chapter", Dominican Monastic Search.
Vol II Fall/Winter 1992 p. 41
6 The Life of St. Dominic London 1924 p 128
7 ST. 1a2ae q108 a4
8 Acta Canon. 24
9 quoted by Marie-Humbert Vicaire, "The Order of
St. Dominic in 1215" in ed. Peter B. Lobo OP, The
Genius of St. Dominic p75
10 Jordan of Saxony Libellus 107, cf LCO 25
11 ed Bede Bailey, Aidan Bellenger and Simon Tugwell
Letters of Bede Jarrett Dominican Sources in English
Vol. 5, Downside and Blackfriars, p. 180
12 1a 2ae q108 a4
13 Primitive Constitutions. Dist I. cXIII
14 1 Ethicorum 1.8 s.7
