2.4 Consecrated life “living memory” of the poor Christ

Consecrated persons profess to be poor according to a plan of voluntary evangelical poverty.

This means that the meaning and dimensions of their poverty can be established only by referring explicitly to the Gospel and, more concretely, to the example and teaching of the poor Christ of the Gospel.

            The poverty of consecrated life, therefore cannot be described in an exclusively horizontal perspective or with merely socio-economic criteria. Already in the context of Old Testament revelation, the content of the expression “poor of Yahweh” did not coincide with the socio-economic concept of “poor”.  Whoever had no faith in God was not considered “poor of Yahweh”.

            In the evangelical age, Christ can be called “poor of Yahweh”. Better, however, to call him “the poor one of the Father”, that is, the poor one par excellence of God Father. His was the most evangelical and most voluntary poverty, because it was chosen freely in  order to implement most generously the plan of salvation designed by the Father:  “…he was rich, but he became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty”. (2 Cor 8:9)

            The poor Christ is not clearly separable either from the obedient or the chaste Christ. It is not possible, as a matter of fact, to trace the depth of Christ’s poverty without  putting it in close relationship with his life of perfect obedience to the Father and with his total docility in completing the mission received.

            The Pope offers this enlightening perspective: “The depth of his poverty  is revealed in the perfect offering of all that is his to the Father.” (VC 22b)  Truly Christ placed himself and all that he had in the hands of the Father. (cf Lk 2:49; 23;46)  He offered all that he was and had to the Father in the most unconditional way.

            Christ was the supreme poor One of the Gospel because, for love of the Father and poor humanity, in need of redemption, he “emptied (‘ekénôsen’)  himself” (Phil 2:7): he made himself empty in front of the Father. The reality of his flesh and the realities at his disposition were totally consecrated to the Father:  “Everything that is mine is yours.” (Jn 17:10)

            Within this framework all the particulars on the social-economic status of Jesus find their just place. During his public life Jesus dressed moderately well (cf Jn 19:23-24); he accepted offerings (cf Lk 8:3) and decided, always in obedience to the Father, the concrete destination of the monetary content of their “bank”. (Jn 12:6; 13:29) That “bank” was a common purse, a purse that served the specific purposes of the “new family” that Jesus, by the will of his Father, had inaugurated in choosing the Twelve.

            Those who profess voluntary evangelical poverty commit themselves to live in poverty like Christ. We cannot state that the commitment of poverty is the same for all Christians. It is not true, for example, that in the use of goods a consecrated person can do all that’s permitted to any other Christian. Every believer, in fact, shares in the poverty of Christ according to the program of the common demands of baptismal poverty. But the consecrated person shares in it, besides, with a new and special title of evangelical conformity to the poor Christ: “…all those reborn in Christ are called to live…a reasonable detachment from material possessions… But baptism in itself does not include … the renunciation of possessions … in the form proper to the evangelical councils”. (VC 30b; cf LG 46b; PC 13a)

                Every consecrated person, in virtue of his rules of a special following of Christ, must live as a “poor one of the Father”. The use of goods, in the case of consecrated persons, is limited and determined by the specific charism of singular consecration and particular mission given by the Father to the members of the institute.

            Consecrated life, embracing with a Christological attitude the evangelical counsel of poverty, is a “living memory” of the poor Christ.