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Western Monasticism

MONASTIC POVERTY must be understood within the context of the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Although all Christians are called to live the counsels in a manner appropriate to their state in life, the clergy are distinct in that they make a public profession of worship. This profession frees them from the concerns of everyday life so that, consecrated entirely to divine service, they can follow Christ more fully and freely and imitate him more clearly and faithfully. They are able to live for Christ and his body, the church, growing in love of God and neighbor. The goods that they forgo in renouncing the world are highly esteemed, but can become an obstacle in their pursuit of the perfection of charity.

This renunciation does not stifle their human development. The Vatican Council II fathers pointed out that embracing of the counsels by a Christian appropriate to state of life results in purification of heart, spiritual liberty, and the fervor of charity. They continue, “they are able to more fully mold the Christian man to that type of chaste and detached life, which Christ the Lord chose for Himself and which His Mother also embraced.”

That renunciation professed by the clergy is beyond the requirements of the commandments. In his Apostolic Exhortation on the Renewal of Religious Life in 1971, Pope Paul VI said, “It is precisely for the sake of the kingdom of heaven that you have vowed to Christ, generously and without reservation, that capacity to love, that need to possess and that freedom to regulate one's own life, which are so precious to man.”

Example of Christ in Poverty

In his vow of poverty, the clergy follows the example of Christ in his self-emptying, in his lack of anxiety about material goods, and in his use of material goods.

Christ's entire life on earth was characterized by poverty. He was born in a stable of a poor family; he was a political refugee in Egypt; he worked at his foster father's trade as a carpenter (he was a member of the working poor); he was an itinerant preacher with a message to, and a love of, the poor; he was publicly executed as a common criminal; and he was buried in another man's grave. Second Corinthians 8:9 articulates this well: “…that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” The clergy strive to follow his example of self-emptying by living a life of poverty.

Christ lived a simple life of detachment and freedom with respect to material goods. He used them appropriately according to the situation—he enjoyed them and enabled others to enjoy them, but he did not obsess about them. Two accounts found in scripture point to this attitude: the story of the wedding at Cana, in which he changes water into the best of wine (John 2:1–10) and the story of the woman who anoints his feet with costly oil, in which he reproaches those who criticize her (Mark 14:3–9). The clergy make every effort to follow Christ's example of appropriate enjoyment of, and detachment from, material goods.

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