Reading through the brief Chapter III of the Common Rules (CR) of the Congregation of the Mission concerning poverty, three points immediately stand out. The first is the starting point – and it is a constant – that motivates every subsequent element: it is the person of Jesus Christ (n. 1). The second point is that it speaks always and only of the virtue of poverty, which – in relation to the vow – is like the content in relation to the container (nn. 1,2,10). The third point is the centrality of the Superior (nn. 3,4,5,6,8,9) within the community, in the management of both personal and community goods. St. Vincent presents a totally poor Jesus: “He embraced poverty to such a degree that He had nowhere to lay His head,” He “to whom all goods belong.” He completes the example of Christ by adding another very important aspect for missionaries: “He constituted the collaborators of His mission, that is, the apostles and disciples, in such a state of poverty that they possessed nothing of their own.”
The first goal of following this poor Christ – and of accepting, like the disciples, the desire to live with Him – is none other than to be and remain free in order to freely fight what is the ruin of almost the entire world: the greedy desire for wealth. But there is a second goal: poverty “will constitute an unassailable bulwark (propugnaculum), through which, with the grace of God, the Congregation will remain stable forever.” Elsewhere he will say that one of the main causes of the downfall of congregations is enrichment. Moreover, “following the example of the first Christians, everything shall be in common among them, and everything will be distributed to them by the Superiors…” The biblical references to the communion of goods are clear (cf. Acts 2:42; 4:32-35; 5:1-11).
St. Vincent asked himself – during a conference – what the virtue of poverty consisted of and responded: “It is a voluntary renunciation of all the goods of the earth for love of God and to serve Him better and care for our salvation; it is a renunciation, an indifference, an abandonment.” He distinguished between exterior and interior renunciation. Both are necessary, but especially the interior one, which is the source and root of the exterior. So true is it that “to renounce the goods of this world outwardly and maintain the desire to possess them is to do nothing, to mock, and to appear better than one is” (cf. CR, n. 10: “Each one will be very careful that this evil [=disordered desire for temporal goods] does not take hold of his heart, not even under the appearance of spiritual good by aspiring to ecclesiastical benefits”).
A central value of the virtue of poverty for St. Vincent is indifference toward riches, in the form of renunciation, detachment, and abandonment. But not to stop there, in the negative, but to love God more, to serve Him better, to acquire freedom in the face of the anxiety of temporal goods, to be free from them and not feel bitterness if they are lacking.
In summary: for St. Vincent, the constitutive elements of the poverty of missionaries are the following: 1 – the imitation of the poverty of Christ, evangelizer of the poor; 2 – the sharing of goods, while respecting the right to possess and manage certain personal belongings; 3 – the proper and moderate use of goods, both community and personal, meaning a simple lifestyle determined by community life and mission; 4 – the good administration of goods in order to serve the poor. The goods of Vincentian communities are the “property of the poor.”
Each of these principles contains or inspires – as the Saint said – countless acts or expressions of poverty that must be discerned appropriately, given the wide range of possible situations. Putting these principles together, we can speak of Vincentian poverty. Therefore, Vincentian poverty is more functional than testimonial. It can be radical, moderate, and varied, depending on the needs of the mission and the service of the poor.
If we want to outline, even in broad terms, the boundaries of Vincentian poverty, we could say: personal poverty has as its minimum limit what is established and as its horizon what the Spirit asks of the missionary, without losing sight of his belonging to the community and the requirements of his vocation; community poverty has as its minimum limit what is established: to fulfill what is prescribed regarding the acquisition of goods, to place goods in common, to use them with discretion, to administer them according to the laws; and as its horizon what is required by the needs of a community of people given to God, for the evangelization and service of the poor. St. Vincent was not a mystic of poverty; he was not so much interested in poverty as in the poor and in the poverty of the poor. All the interest he had in poverty, whether as a virtue or a vow, was due to the impact that the practice of poverty could have directly or indirectly on missionaries, given to God for evangelizing and serving the poor. Vincentian poverty is justified and explained in the light of the Vincentian mission.
Fr. Giovanni Burdese, C.M.
(Italian Province of the C.M.)
