On Poverty
2003/11
TO THE WHOLE SOCIETY
Dear Fathers and Brothers,
The Peace of Christ!
At the request of the Major Superiors, together at Loyola in 2000, I am happy to be able to send you the revised statutes on our Jesuit poverty. When Father Arrupe sent a word of encouragement along with the promulgation of the statutes on poverty in 1976 (AR 16, 1976, p. 911f), he admitted that the document risked remaining a dead issue without a true conversion of heart. He saw clearly that where poverty was concerned it was not enough to rely on the observance of statutes; following the Lord as a companion in His poverty requires a conversion of heart: sought incessantly by means of the statutes, without doubt, that are to be observed seriously and generously, but above all with a familiarity with a Lord who is poor.
Indeed the Lord does not even belong to Himself¾God from God, Light from Light¾because His very being belongs to His Father and to us, to whom He was sent on a mission of love. Poverty lived in following the Lord cannot be limited to what one has or be content with regulations on the economic or financial order. It implies a gift of oneself, as is the very being of the Lord Himself, which includes being chaste and being obedient. This is what Saint Ignatius called “the highest spiritual poverty” (Ex 147), a gift to be asked for in a colloquy, heart to heart, with the Lord poor, because it involves a conversion of the heart.
I would like to highlight some aspects of a conversion of heart by way of the observance of these statutes.
A first aspect is the recognition of the meaning of the word “poverty” in the evangelical sense. It can happen that this word bothers us so much that we are tempted to substitute for it expressions such as “vow of sharing,” “vow of solidarity” or “vow of compassion.” On some continents poverty is not considered a positive value: one needs to get out of poverty and misery to be fully human. In other parts of the world poverty functions at times as a form of counter value in a society marked by a market economy and by an overwhelming desire to consume. There poverty would signify a healthy sobriety in which the person finds his or her happiness living on what is essential. However, this is not evangelical poverty.
The word especially irritates those of us in consecrated life when, even with the best of intentions, we do not arrive at being as poor as the many genuinely poor people around us. Many religious women and men share the precarious and wretched living conditions of the poor but often without experiencing their insecurity and desperation and without being taken advantage of and excluded as they are. Especially in the Church¾and for the Church¾those in consecrated life take on missions that require great means and that presuppose institutions in which apostolic effectiveness seems to go against any observance of poverty. It would be simplistic rhetoric to see nothing more in these situations than pretenses for not selling all one has to distribute the proceeds to the poor.
On the contrary, St. Ignatius invites us to enter into the heart of this complex and disconcerting reality, each one according to his vocation and his mission, and to ask of the Lord the concrete form that He expects from each of us, chosen from among the many possible authentic forms of evangelical poverty. It is spiritual poverty—living the mystery of the poor Lord—that ought to give form to, inspire and motivate our actual poverty “if the Divine Majesty would be served and if He would want to choose and receive me” (Ex 147).
It is to this spirituality that Father Polanco, in the name of Saint
Ignatius, encourages the Jesuits of the
The important and indispensable role of discernment is a second aspect of our poverty, which must be emphasized. The Spiritual Exercises reveal to us an Ignatius who does not want to decide himself how to be poor, but who asks that the Lord give him the concrete form of his actual poverty. The Spiritual Diary testifies to an agonizing struggle when precise choices needed to be made or practical measures to be taken, because Saint Ignatius did not want to make any other choices than those of his Lord. This was especially true because he was aware that in matters of riches and poverty we are exposed to deceptions and that in fact we deceive ourselves.
In a certain sense, it would be simpler to make a list of what one can and cannot have to be poor. Yet an exhaustive list, valid for everyone, would hardly be practical, given our diversity of ministries and socio-economic conditions. More importantly however, it would allow someone who observes these rules to declare himself “poor”; whereas Saint Ignatius would want us to be prepared always to do more—the magis—to make our actual poverty stricter—this is one of our vows. Saint Ignatius is not content merely with laying the foundations for a healthy and prayerful discernment in the area of poverty; he fixes the concrete results of his discernment, presenting precise choices in the Formula of the Institute (nn. 1, 7 and 8), gathering them together in the General Examen (4) and spelling them out amply in the Constitutions (553-581).
Thus, our observance of poverty specified by the Constitutions has remained in effect until September 15, 1967, but has come up against a series of insurmountable difficulties, due in large part to economic changes, and in need for exceptions and dispensations, especially for casuistic interpretations. The new statutes, such as Decree 9 of the 34th General Congregation, while insisting on a conversion of heart, commit our actual poverty to prayerful discernment at all levels of the Society. This discernment, when done in common, is very different from the deliberation of a board of directors. It is above all prayerful, that is, it asks that the Lord choose us for actual poverty, as long as this would be for the service and praise of His divine goodness, while confessing that such poverty is against our instinctive desire to have and possess (cf. Ex 157).
In this way a prayerful discernment could lead to prophetic gestures in regard to poverty, in which not only the superfluous but also the essential is shared with the poor or with ministries that are little appreciated because they have not been as successful or prestigious. In any case, it is always better and more sure in what touches upon ourselves and our lifestyle to subtract and diminish as much as possible, and to approach as closely as possible (Ex 344) the Lord in his passion to bring the Good news to the poor.
This prophetic treatment of goods by no means excludes the careful administration and management of an organization that, in any event, presents itself as “non-profit,” but it does exclude any commercialization and any undue capitalization. This discernment in common should take place in all communities, at the level of provinces and regions, for all the works which depend on the Society, especially at the moment in which the annual budget is discussed and when the economic situation of the community or of a work is reviewed at the end of the year or during the visit of the Major Superior.
The observance of poverty prescribed by the current statutes is more demanding than the preceding system because these statutes emphasize that our search for actual poverty is never-ending, and that our style of life and work has constantly to be reviewed in the light of new demands for solidarity, within and without the Society. This revision also benefits from a better understanding of what Saint Ignatius wanted in our spiritual and actual poverty. Without doubt, the result of a prayerful discernment in common depends largely upon the personal discernment of those who participate in it. When making the Spiritual Exercises annually, we should verify to what extent we desire that His Divine Majesty be served by what we are and have, and in what measure we are serving it, according to His choice, by means of an actual poverty (cf. Ex 146).
This availability to review unceasingly and to verify implies that each of us accepts responsibility for the goods that are at our disposal and that all goods be used in a totally transparent spirit of poverty, in a sober and hospitable style of life, open to any and all sharing and solidarity with those who live in misery, in injustice or marginalized. Without this personal discernment, what is done in common runs the very real risk of remaining a dead issue or of our being content merely with the wise administration of goods.
The practice of this discernment is
distinguished by three criteria, explicitly formulated by Saint Ignatius in his
writings. The first is that of the mission received. Clearly inspired by
the way in which
Referring to the “preaching in poverty” of Saint Ignatius, Father Arrupe has often reminded us that it is not only a matter of accomplishing the mission received but also one of completing it not according to our way of doing it but by the way of proceeding that was the Lord’s. Thus the second criterion of Saint Ignatius readily summarizes the command of the Lord to give freely what we have received freely from God. It is a mission that should inevitably be accomplished with the heart of a poor person, with poor means in which there is no proportionality between the investment and the result, without looking for prestige or means of advantage.
The Society has long had to struggle with the free service that it desired to give but that was often seen exclusively as a non-paid service. As the Lord gave of himself freely, without expecting recompense or reimbursement but showing himself in a gratuity of love and of gift, of welcome and of sharing, our free service as a criterion of actual poverty should speak of the true face of Christ, of His message and of His person. This gratuity remains a lived reality, as long as the salary earned or the contribution received for a work is not, in fact, proportional to the gift of self that marks the personal fulfillment of a mission.
Experience shows that it is even more difficult to maintain this gratuity as a criterion of our actual poverty in the works and institutions. According to the 34th General Congregation, apostolic effectiveness and gratuity should not necessarily be mutually exclusive, even though maintaining the ever-difficult balance between them will require a constant discernment. Thus, we should be ready to abandon a work or an institution in which we can no longer give testimony to the gratuity of the Lord’s gift of Himself, especially in cases where it is no longer a matter of a true service but of counter-testimony to the Gospel announced to the poor. On the other hand, we should continue to promote with apostolic dynamism and spiritual creativity institutions and works in which not only effectiveness or results are obtained but those in which a true service is rendered, especially to the friends of the Lord who are the poor.
It is the third criterion that should govern our actual poverty in the mission that is given to us: evangelical solidarity with the poor. It is a significant fact that the Spiritual Exercises include rules for the ministry of distributing alms (Ex 337). If in society today, so extremely sensitive to socio-economic justice and injustice, the giving of alms has lost or changed its meaning, for Saint Ignatius distributing alms was a question of life and death (Ex 340-341), one upon which one’s greater or lesser love for the poor in the name of God could be judged. Thanks to the impetus given by the 32nd General Congregation, there exists a much greater and generous solidarity with the poor and desire to live with more simplicity in order that the Society can give ever more of its means and human and material resources to those who have ever more need (GC 32, 270-271). And more than ever we are aware of the poverty of our means in coming to the aid of the poor or overturning the “structures of sin,” according to the expression of Pope John Paul II.
Our solidarity runs the risk of being suffocated by the growing misery, a misery that by reason of its origins is revealed to be very complex and by reason of its vastness requires exorbitant means. There is, basically, the poor person who, having only a few loaves of bread and fish at his disposal, needs to come to the aid of a hungry crowd. Without a paschal sense of our poverty, the growing solidarity in which we participate easily becomes a discouraging sense of frustration. This takes nothing away from the fact that all that we can do personally as individuals¾because the gift of oneself can never be replaced by mere money—through our community and in a work becomes an integral part of the mission “to preach in poverty” the paschal force of Him who, being rich, made himself poor to make us rich.
For this conversion of heart to a spiritual poverty that is lived, according to the mission received, in actual poverty, we give the last word to John Paul II: “Outstanding pages in the history of evangelical solidarity and heroic dedication have been written by consecrated persons in these years of profound changes and great injustices, of hopes and disappointments, of striking victories and bitter defeats. Consecrated persons are therefore asked to bear a renewed and vigorous evangelical witness to self-denial and restraint in a form of fraternal life inspired by principles of simplicity and hospitality, also as an example to those who are indifferent to the needs of their neighbor. Even before being a service on behalf of the poor, evangelical poverty is a value in itself, since it recalls the first of the Beatitudes in the imitation of the poor Christ. Its primary meaning, in fact, is to attest that God is the true wealth of the human heart” (Vita consecrata, 90).
In conclusion: these revised statutes on poverty are the fruit of ample and careful, prayerful discernment by the entire Society. They constitute for us today the concrete picture of our actual poverty. In order to be authentic in our vocation and mission we must take them seriously and make them a reality in our personal and community life by putting them into practice. Because “poverty, as the strong wall of the religious institute, should be loved and preserved in its integrity as far as this is possible with God’s grace” (Const. 553).
Yours sincerely in Christ,
Peter-Hans
Kolvenbach, S.J.
Superior General