I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.
IA few years ago, my wife had her job downsized. It was quite a shock to both of us, as you can imagine. We began to worry about making our mortgage payments or if we had enough money for our utilities. We began to look at condominiums and smaller houses that we could afford on only my teacher’s salary. We cut back on all non-essential expenses for a while.
By the grace of God, things worked out well. My wife was able to secure another job and has been stably employed for a number of years. We have been able to manage our finances and we did not have to move. Many good friends, some of whom I hadn’t heard from in years, contacted me with words of advice and support. I was also incredibly humbled when we received some anonymous donations to see us through those rough early times.
Reflecting back, I often think about how God saw us through this time of incredible stress and anxiety. To this day, I am gun shy about any financial turbulence in our lives despite His generous care. But thinking about these events recently I look at what it was that I was truly afraid of: poverty.
As I have gotten older, I begin to think more and more about things like retirement. With life-spans getting longer, I worry about having enough money to live off of after I stop working. And should another unexpected job loss occur, we would be right back where we started. There is much I could write about putting trust in God, especially after His past help. But I was thinking about how living in poverty, living in want, makes me nervous.
But then I reflect on the great saints like Mother Teresa and St. Francis of Assisi. Both of these saints lived in great poverty. Mother Teresa would sleep in a small cell on a simple mattress. She would then spend an hour on her knees on a stone floor during Mass. Afterwards, she would live in service to the poorest of the poor, carrying them on her back when she could, to meet their needs. And while she went through issues of depression and the dark night of the soul, she had within her a real peace.
St. Francis of Assisi was so poor that he would beg for the garbage from the people of Assisi so he could eat. And when they gave it to him he expressed overwhelming gratitude and joy.
Both of these saints found peace and joy in something that caused me great fear and anxiety. Why is this the case? Why were they seemingly unbothered by the suffering that comes from poverty? I think that I may know part of that reason:
They chose to suffer voluntarily.
In his book Twilight of the Idols, the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote “”He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” What he meant was that suffering is unendurable if it is viewed as purposeless. Human beings are constantly searching for meaning in their lives. It occurs when horrible things happen to us like sickness of financial catastrophe. We also look for meaning in the small sufferings of everyday life. When I run retreats, if students are asked to do an activity that they don’t enjoy, the question I hear more often than anything is, “What’s the point of this?” Because they see the activity as without a point, they find it difficult to endure.
Remember The Karate Kid from the 1980’s. Daniel is about to quit his tutelage under Mr. Miyagi because all of the exercises he has done seem pointless. It is only when he sees how they have been helping him that he re-commits himself to his studies. In the same way, when suffering enters into our lives, when we cannot see a point, it feels so difficult to endure.
I ask my students how they would feel if they were forced to wipe someone’s butt for them. Most are understandably horrified. Some say that there is no amount of money you could pay them to do something that disgusting. But I tell them that statistically speaking, most of them will be wiping butts for free… when they have babies. “Well, that’s different!” they say. And in a sense they are correct. Besides the fact that there is a clear parental connection to the person you are cleaning, the action is one that is done voluntarily, not forced.
You can read the whole article here.
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