Coming Together in Poverty

Community is the place where our poverty is acknowledged and accepted, not as something we have to learn to cope with as best as we can but as a true source of new life.

Living community in whatever form - family, parish, twelve-step program, or intentional community - challenges us to come together at the place of our poverty, believing that there we can reveal our richness.

-- Henri Nouwen

The Definition Of Poverty

The definition of poverty is broad in Mother Teresa’s terms. She defines “least of my brethren” as “the hungry and the lonely, not only for food but for the Word of God; the thirsty and the ignorant, not only for water but also for knowledge, peace, truth, justice, and love; the naked and the unloved, not only for clothes but also for human dignity; the unwanted, the unborn child; the racially discriminated against; the homeless and abandoned, not only for shelter made of bricks, but for a heart that understands, the covers, that loves; the sick, the dying destitutes, and the captives, not only in body but also in mind and spirit; all those who have lost all hope and faith in life, the alcoholics and drug addicts and all those who have lost God (for them God was but God is) and who have lost all hope in the power of the Spirit.

-- from Mother Teresa – A Simple Path

Our Poverty, God's Dwelling Place

How can we embrace poverty as a way to God when everyone around us wants to become rich?
Poverty has many forms.
We have to ask ourselves: "What is my poverty?"
Is it lack of money, lack of emotional stability, lack of a loving partner, lack of security, lack of safety, lack of self-confidence?
Each human being has a place of poverty.
That's the place where God wants to dwell! "How blessed are the poor," Jesus says (Matthew 5:3).
This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty.
We are so inclined to cover up our poverty and ignore it that we often miss the opportunity to discover God, who dwells in it.
Let's dare to see our poverty as the land where our treasure is hidden.