Possession, the Demise of Soaring

Don’t let evil fill your pocket with tiny little pebbles, even when they are genuine diamonds, for they will drag you down. Possession is the demise of soaring. Be like a skylark and nosh! Have a good time and be bathed in the sunshine! Everything is yours, a gift from God, be happy for it! You won’t be able to soar with rotting manna enough for more than one day.

For the sake of your health, like when you prescribe a slimming diet on your body, you must tame your desire to possess.

All reforms in history have begun with the forming of right relations with material resources. Buddha, being a king, could have said anything; his palace would have been buried together with his name by the time. But his lanky figure under a tree, known to have given up everything, is imprinted in the eternal memory of mankind, as a person who was believed to be happy.

 Jesus Christ was born in a stable in Bethlehem by a sovereign decision of God. The Seducer offered him all treasures and riches in the world, but He refused to accept it. After St. John the Baptist has been beheaded, they wanted to elect him to be the king, but He dispersed the crowd. He not only lives in poverty, but also encourages us to, ‘Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and come, follow me.’

The gospel teaches radical poverty.

In the footstep of Jesus Christ, only those have become great people who somehow had a hunch that it was impossible to soar sinking under the burden of worldly treasures and power.  St. Benedict left all that he had in Rome behind and withdrew to Subiaco in the mountains to live in greater poverty than the poor. But, he has become one of the patron saints of Europe.

 St. Francis, the fiancé of the Poor Lady, and following in his footsteps, so many begging friars have been all over the world, and their infinitely happy and cheerful life opened up unlimited prospects. For them poverty was not an unavoidable evil that must be suffered with teeth clenched for a greater ultimate benefit, but it was their true wealth consciously undertaken, the source of their life and joy.

 I reckon that puritan simple-mindedness of the Reformation gave believers much of a lift. In replacement of Renaissance pageantry and luxury that only the few could afford, it has produced freedom undertaken knowingly. Unfortunately, some intellectual values have also been thrown into the fire, of which the most precious was unity.

Likewise, I think that the essence of student movements launched at the end of the sixties was rebellion. The young people felt that things, customs and structures had been hanged and forced upon them, which were suffocating them and they could not breath. The young people were and are longing for huddling together with brothers and sisters in the mountains, wearing torn jeans, in the fragile world created by flame rivulet, and for singing and laughing and for being free.

To take off and throw off everything, which would degrade soaring to walking mincingly and wriggling in the mud.

 Because of the desire to possess, whether material resources or power, it’s all the same, one is beside himself, uncontrolled, treads on his partner, and practically may lower community existence of humankind down to the level of a gang of robbers, who are distributing pillage among themselves.

Who has and how much share from the budget? It’s terrifying! I think that many Western countries realised that there is no need for children because it’s too expensive and because emigrants can fill in the gaps in the country. We need no family, either, because single persons or infertile homosexuals buy individual flats, washing machines and televisions, and they maintain their flats purchased from loans. And then money, taxes, TVA and VAT are to come, so that the state also has got something to distribute. Work and consume, produce profits for also those, who you might not even let in your house!

It’s our fault, a fault we share all, because if either political power would insist that we should stop and pay for our common debts from our salary of the thirteenth month, or that consumption should be held down, or let’s live simple and like the poor but free and in brotherly love, the proposing party would fail elections. Unfortunately, any government that would prioritise the respect of our wonderful world created by God over economic growth would lose people who voted for them, and would fall.

It’s our fault, because today’s politicians are the produces of our greedy desires. They say what we want to hear. And we only let them speak, as long as they talk about money.

These people are willing tools in our hands. It’s our fault.

 The Lord of the world consciously undertook a quiet life in Nazareth for decades. It was not King Herod who has made him happy.

We live like Louis XIV, France’s Sun King, used to live, for we have got everything in the world. We are so well off that our ancestors wouldn’t even have dreamt of. Still, we have such a hunger that seems impossible to satisfy. You may wolf, or hoard mundane treasure and power; it will never give you a feeling of fullness. Because the hunger we have inside goes beyond all these horizons.  

Jesus Christ sells neither low-quality goods nor simulated pearls. Poverty described in the gospel makes us free indeed and opens up infinity for us. 

When I was a student, I used to write it on my precious books: “It belongs to you and everyone”. It was hard to say it, and to waive the right to possess but everything, which has become valuable in my life, began here and then.

“And he said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers and sisters or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.” (Luke 18:29)

A sweet and magnificent experience of my life was to learn infinite abundance implied in renunciation, as being a younger brother, a “Frater Minore”. That heart-stirring current, which radiates from our provident Father to this ravenous world.

There’s a way out for this overheated world ready to explode in the chain reaction of egoism. And it is renunciation consciously undertaken from love, and likewise solidarity undertaken from love. Share your bread with the poor!

The course of modesty and poverty taught in the gospel is open for each of us.

 Fr Csaba