MY APOSTOLIC POVERTY (How It Taught Me About Prosperity)

    The Lord talks sometimes talks to me while I am mowing the lawn. It is actually a good time to talk with God because the activity is monotonous and does not require a lot of thought �" it is mostly walking up and down, back and forth, or going forward in ever decreasing circles. I often find myself meditating on biblical passages, or theological ideas, and during those meditations, I will have a “REVELATION,” Sometimes t is a revelation of knowledge in which I suddenly know something I did not previously know, or I have become aware of a truth I had not known before; other times it comes as a revelation of insight in which I suddenly understand something I had already known in a new way. Sometimes it comes as both: a revelation of knowledge and of insight in which I suddenly understand old knowledge in a new way, and simultaneously realize or understand something altogether new. The revelation that inspired this book is that last kind: knowledge mixed with insight.

    I had spent the previous year or so living what I referred to as the Discipline of Poverty. The year or so before I took on the Discipline of Poverty for myself, I had rediscovered The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and was so profoundly inspired in my faith, that I decided to live as a Jesuit in all ways possible. It was also around this time that the Presiding Bishop of my church expressed interest in resurrecting an Old Catholic Jesuit Order in our communion, and I focused on learning how to live and be a Contemplative in Action.

    Saint Ignatius stated that the purpose of The Society of Jesus (the official name of the Jesuit Order) is:

•    To Strive for the Defense and Propagation of the Faith;

•    To Strive for the Progress of Souls in Christian Life and Doctrine, by Means Of:

o    Public Preaching,
o    Lectures and Any Other Ministration Whatsoever of the Word of God,
o    Retreats,
o    The Education of Children and Unlettered Persons in Christianity,
o    The Spiritual Consolation of Christ's Faithful Through Hearing Confessions and Administering the Other Sacraments;

•    To Reconcile the Estranged;

•    To Compassionately Assist and Serve Those Who Are in Prisons or Hospitals;

•    To Perform Any Other Works of Charity, According to What Will Seem Expedient for the Glory of God and the Common Good.

In order to achieve these ends, Saint Ignatius adopted the three traditional “religious” vows for the order: (Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience) to which he added a fourth: absolute obedience to the Bishop of Rome.

    Even though Saint Ignatius adopted the traditional vows for religious orders, and even though he seemed to sometimes hold a romantic view of poverty and the other vows, he accepted that there was a practical application for these vows, especially since the fourth vow of the Jesuits �" the vow to obey the Bishop of Rome and do and go wherever he sends them �" would make them have to be able to leave and travel at a moment’s notice

    Since a Jesuit has to be both willing and ready to move to the other side of the world if that is what the Bishop of Rome demanded, owning property, being married, having a family and possessions would be a hindrance. Remember, Saint Ignatius and the others did not live in a world of instant communication. Leaving a home was leaving a home for years or decades or forever. Leaving a spouse was leaving for years, decades, or forever. Writing letters to a spouse could take years to arrive. In addition, the Jesuit had to be able to journey to say China, spend decades there, and not worry about if someone had broken into his house and stole his possessions, or if someone else claimed his house and was living in it, or if the house had burned down.

    So in the context of Saint Ignatius’ time, a vow of poverty made since �" IT WAS APOSTOLIC! It allowed the Jesuit to be sent out (the meaning to the word apostle) and proclaim and defend the Christian faith and to convert others to the faith. Therefore, in the Ignatian sense, poverty is not simply for the sake of poverty, or to live out a romantic ideal of faith, but it was to functionally and practically live as apostles. So it was not romantic poverty, or abject poverty, but APOSTOLIC POVERTY. Just as chastity and obedience were also Apostolic Chastity and Apostolic Obedience.

    So as I strove to live this ideal to the best of my ability, and as studied The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus in order to find out the practical rules and suggestions for living as a Jesuit so I could create the Old Catholic version of the order for my church, I took on The Discipline of Poverty rather than taking a vow of poverty.

    The reason why I decided to accept poverty as a discipline rather than as a vow was because I wanted the order I was developing to be something every Christian could use, not just those who are willing or called to extreme and devout religious devotion. My goal was to reinterpret these terms so that Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience could make sense and work in the lives of clergy who can marry and have children, but also to redefine these ideas into something that could it make sense for lay-people who will never take vows other than their wedding vows. How can married people live a vow, or even a discipline of Chastity? How do people with a spouse and children and other responsibilities live Poverty as a discipline or as a vow?

    Well, for me it was easy since I am not married and since I have no children. So I accepted the idea of not having a stated salary, but to find ways to sustain myself through an irregular salary. My salary as a college professor changes every semester because I may only have one class or three, or none. My salary as a substitute teacher varies since there are days or weeks when I am not called and other times when I work every day. And other means of income, officiating weddings for instance, are infrequent. So I decided to live with no steady, guaranteed income.

    I also accepted that Apostolic Poverty meant identifying with the poor in such manner as I only buy and live on what poor people buy and live on. Even if I somehow have the money, I do not go out and live on lobster and Filet Mignon because poor people are not living on those things. I had to redefine my life in terms of necessity versus luxury and use my money on necessities.

    All this went to the notion that the Discipline of Poverty meant to live simply and only spend and have what I need. I had things and possessions, but I saw all those things and possessions, not as mine or as something I own, but as gifts or objects entrusted to me to be used as mine while I had them, knowing that they can all be taken away at any second.

    There is a profound freedom in living the Discipline of Poverty! Knowing that you do not have to strive for more, or knowing you are not a failure because you do not have the things that society tells you that you need is freeing. I made a choice to accept that any money I have is God’s money, and if God demanded I use it in a specific way, then I use it. If I had money or food or anything else, great; if I did not have food, money, or anything else, I trusted that somehow I would get it. I never went hungry living the Discipline of Poverty. God put people with money in my path. God put people with food and things I needed in my path. God made people around me generous, and made me grateful for their generosity. I realized that the more grateful I was for the little I had, and the more faith I had in the fact that I would always have what I needed, and the more generous I was with the little I had, much of which was being provided by the generosity of others, the more money and food and things I seemed to have.

    I learned that somehow the combination of Faith, Gratitude, and Generosity opened up a flow of abundance. Granted, my abundance was small because I had chosen to keep it small because it was on the one hand freeing to have little and it was on the other hand a part of that Apostolic Poverty that freed me to potentially go and do whatever I was called to go and do.

    This is where the revelation came from while I was mowing the lawn. It was a hot day and I was in my mower’s trance, pacing back and forth, pushing the mower. I was thinking about prosperity and positive thinking and all those movements and balancing those ideas with the Bible, particularly the New Testament and the words of Jesus. Then I added the idea of Apostolic Poverty to the mix of ideas and how Apostolic Poverty was designed to free the person to be able to go and do wherever and whatever was necessary to serve the Gospel and the Christian faith, and how it helped me and those who practice it identify and remember and be concerned with the needs of the poor. And a flash of knowledge and insight came to me as I was turning one-hundred-eighty degrees to move the next row in the other direction. I was thinking about the purpose of Apostolic Prosperity and the purpose of the Jesuit Order, and I realized that I could do all that if I were very wealthy.

    If I were wealthy, I could go and do what needed to be done because I would be wealthy enough to be able to go anywhere whenever I wanted to and to do whatever had to be done. If I were wealthy, I could still carry out the goals and purpose of what Saint Ignatius said were the purposes of the Order he founded. If I were rich and still decided to live simply with abundance, still accepting that no matter how wealthy I become, none of that wealth is really mine, but a gift or something entrusted to me to be used for serving God; if I would still live by faith, knowing that God is blessing me with abundant prosperity so that I can then be a blessing to others who are in need; If I were grateful for the abundance that God provided me, never taking it for granted and never assuming that I deserve it from my own merits or hard work, but because I am blessed by God and open to that blessing; and if I were generous with all that God is giving me, willing to give as much of it away as was necessary to serve God; then, I would have access to infinite wealth and prosperity. I would have APOSTOLIC PROSPERITY which would achieve far more than Apostolic Poverty could ever hope to achieve.

    Suddenly my mind was flooded with verses and passages of the New Testament and I understood them in the light of this new revelation. The words of Jesus instructs me in how to live Apostolic Prosperity. Jesus tells me why I need to be prosperous, how to be prosperous, why God blesses me with prosperity, and what I am to do with my prosperity. Jesus is the example. When I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I am accepting the example that Jesus set for His followers, and I am accepting that I demonstrate my love for Jesus by keeping His commandments �" and one of His commandments is accepting that Jesus is giving me a life of abundance. Wealth is not bad. Money is not the root of all evil! That is a misquote. The love of money �" greed �" is the root of all evil. It is my attitude toward wealth and how I use my wealth that is good or bad. Do I use my wealth to serve God, or do I simply serve wealth for the sake of serving myself? That is the difference between Apostolic Prosperity and greed!