Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Clare Living Out Voluntary Poverty

Voluntary poverty is indeed a mysterious thing. There are many people living today, like those living in the world of Francis and Clare, who have been born into involuntary poverty and see no way out of that poverty. In today’s world, the poor, who Jesus himself said we would always have among us, are looked down on, told to “go get a job,” or ignored by society. Francis and Clare, however, chose voluntary poverty, a thing practically no one in their time would do, and it is doubtful anyone today would choose. 

Their poverty however, enabled them to see beyond the material world, to the world that encompasses the beauty of God’s creation, including the natural world and everyone who lives in this world. Because of this belief that the world and all it contains is a supreme good given to us by our God, they were able to see God, not only in the natural world around them as evidenced by Francis’s Canticle of the Creatures, which took him a lifetime to compose. They also saw God’s face in every human being, from the lepers they both cared for and were not repulsed by, to the Sultan Malik al-Khamil of Egypt, who Francis sought out to try to bring peace to a world struggling with war between Christians and Muslims. 

It is hard for to imagine choosing voluntary poverty. This doesn’t mean just giving up their material possessions, as Francis and Clare did, but a host of other “possessions.” They gave up their families who could not accept their way of life. They give up the honors bestowed on prophets of the past. They gave up the comfort and support of friends. Francis, perhaps, even gave up the respect of the community for rebuilding the church of San Damiano, when he realized his call was to rebuild the greater Church. Not only did they incur the wrath of family and friends, but of Church authorities that could not understand this new way of life Francis was proposing. As a result, their poverty went well beyond the absence of material goods, but the true poverty of the spirit that Jesus honored in the Sermon on the Mount.  

How can we choose voluntary poverty? Perhaps by giving up a few hours of productive work, work which might earn us decent wage, to take that time to be with a friend who needs us, perhaps not to bind up leprous wounds, but to bind up wounds of the heart? Perhaps by giving up the comfort of being secure in the fact that people like us, to take a stance, unpopular though it may be, to fight for justice for a condemned prisoner? Perhaps by ignoring the temptation to rest our weary body through an afternoon nap, to instead walk through the garden with a lonely widow, enjoying the beauty of the flowers and fruits in her garden?

Francis and Clare did all of this and more because of their voluntary poverty. It was through letting go of possessions, material and otherwise, that they came to see the beauty of Brother Sun and Sister Moon, to be able to let the Spirit carry them to unchartered territories through Brother Wind, and to get their hands dirty in Sister Earth.