Types of poverty

Here is a matrix I put together on the relationship between different types of poverty (if you're reading this on a computer, you can click the image to enlarge it):

A note on terms. I'm presenting wealth and poverty under two aspects, the objective and the subjective. We could say that one's objective poverty/wealth is measured by the size of one's bank account. It refers to a measurable object outside of the subject (viz., material goods). Subjective poverty/wealth is measured by one's relationship with others and with God, who is the ultimate source of our happiness and meaning. It refers to a relationship intrinsic to the subject.

Obviously there's nothing wrong, in itself, with buying purses.
But there is a type of spiritual poverty that seeks to replace God with things.

According to this chart, the poorest of the poor would be those who are spiritually and materially poor. Ranking the other types of poverty is more difficult and depends in part on your hierarchy of values. Is spiritual or material well-being more important to you?

Consider this thought experiment--to be spiritually rich and materially poor or spiritually poor and materially rich--which would you choose? The question quickly reveals our hierarchy of values. To be fair, there are an infinite number of nuances and qualifications that make answering that question difficult, if not impossible. But if we simplify the choice to this--would you rather be rich without God or poor with God?--I think we can agree that the ideal Christian would choose poverty with God over wealth without God. Thus we have Christ on the Cross.

Mother Teresa often spoke about the difference between spiritual and material poverty, and how people in both situations could be called the poorest of the poor. She also observed that spiritual poverty is much deeper and more painful than material poverty (so there's a good case to be made that the person who is spiritually rich and materially poor is better off than the person who is spiritually poor and materially rich, though this requires an eschatological perspective. "Blessed are the poor...").

In her talks, she often associated material poverty with the developing world and spiritual poverty with the developed world. It would, of course, be dangerous to reify this distinction. Mother Teresa knew that the materially poor also exist in the developed world, just as the spiritually poor exist in the developing world. But it is generally true that development and material contentment can threaten us with a spiritual malaise. Development is good (obviously), as is the material world (obviously), but when we inordinately desire our material good over our spiritual good, sin lurks nearby.

The two pillars

A charism (>Gk: charis: favor, gift, grace) is any gift of the Holy Spirit. I am using it in this context to refer to the founding grace of a religious order, from which that order draws its spiritual life. Every charism has two aspects: a spirituality and a mission.

• Spirituality is a particular way of relating to God. It is not a substitute for religion, but a particular lived experience that places a person in relation to Jesus Christ and the Trinity. The spirituality of the Jesuits, for example, has a particular focus on discernment of spirits. The spirituality of the Benedictines focuses on the liturgy, especially on relating to God through communal prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours. The spirituality of the Dominicans places emphasis on coming to a deeper knowledge of God through study and contemplation. 

• Mission is a particular apostolic work towards which a charism is oriented. It is important to note that the mission is not necessarily an active apostolate. Monks, perhaps even more than missionaries, go out in search of souls to save them, but they do so through prayer and penance. To give some examples, the particular mission of the Dominicans is preaching; the mission of the Benedictines is prayerful labor; the mission of the Jesuits is...almost anything, it seems! But historically they have been excellent educators and missionaries.   

Of course, I give these examples with the caveat that I am painting in broad strokes. The particular spirituality and mission of any order is far more nuanced than I have presented them.

An illumination from what appears to be Pentecost.
The Holy Spirit is the source of all charisms.

But back to the point: The MC charism has two scriptural foundations for these two pillars of its charism. They are the source of inspiration for the life and prayer of the MC. We could say that they are the two engines that drive the MC's body and soul.

1. Jesus' cry of anguish from the Cross--"I thirst!" (Jn 19:28)--is the basis of the spirituality. Mother Teresa, in a famous letter she wrote to her Congregation from Varanassi, tells us that the thirst of Jesus is something more than love, something deeper than love. This is, of course, difficult to understand outside of a lived experience of Christ's thirst, as Mother had on the train to Darjeeling, when she received her call within a call to found the MCs. The MC takes his identity entirely from his understanding of Jesus's thirst for him. He comes to recognize himself and his vocation only in the light of this thirst. And from this experience of being loved, he desires to go out to the world to satiate Jesus's thirst--to share Christ's love by loving others.



The spirituality: "I thirst".

2. How does one satiate the thirst of Christ? Mother understood that Christ was especially present in the poorest of the poor. She took her inspiration from the 25th chapter of Matthew, when christ gives us his criteria for judgment, when he is separating the sheep from the goats: "whatever you did to the least of these my brethren--you did it to me" (Mt 25:31-46). When we give water to the thirsty, we are giving water to Christ. In the poorest of the poor, Christ thirsts to be given water, but he thirsts even more to be loved.

The mission: "you did it to me".

To summarize: the MC understands the meaning of his existence as this--to quench the thirst of Christ on the cross, by quenching his thirst for water and for love in the poorest of the poor. And I cannot emphasize enough that the poorest of the poor, those who dwell at the peripheries of existence, exist in the wealthy countries of the world perhaps even more than in the poorer countries. There is a great poverty of loneliness in the developed world, a thirst for love and a thirst for God. 

Sharing our poverty

Why do we hide our poverty? Our loneliness, our weakness, our sadness, our emptiness? Why do we put on a smile for the world if our heart is not truly smiling? Of course, there is a time and a place to reveal our poverty, but in my experience we too often hide it. And we have learned to hide it well.

Revealing our poverty--showing others our incompleteness--makes us vulnerable. But it also opens us to love. And it gives others a chance to love. How many people are dying to love and be loved? Whether or not we realize it, we all yearn to love deeply, to love unto the end. But we distract ourselves with our work and study and entertainment. And then, when we do realize that deep need within ourselves to love, when we realize that ultimate meaning is not found in our work, or our study, or our endless distractions, we feel desolate, because there is no one to love. Everyone else is to busy working at a million trivial things to allow themselves to receive the one thing necessary: to be loved. And each day, a little closer to death, that ultimate mark of our finitude, the ultimate reminder that love alone matters, that only love survives beyond this passing world.

What a world we live in! And yet, are we perhaps to busy to love or be loved? Do we give others a chance to love us? Perhaps we think it selfish to want to be loved. Or perhaps we are afraid to show others our brokenness, our unfulfilled desires, our yearning for belonging. But what a gift it is to show others that we are not complete! It is a gift we give them, the opportunity to love. How many people are yearning to love, but are afraid to reach out in love, because they are afraid of being rejected, ignored, or misunderstood?

And so it is a gift we give others when we show them our need to be loved. It is a gift because it opens to them a pathway which will lead them to their own happiness. This poverty of mine, this loneliness of yours...it is a gift, because when my poverty meets yours--there I can love, there I can empty myself of myself to fill myself with loving you.

Let us be more willing to show our poverty. Think to yourself, What is that poverty for me? Where is there loneliness in me...where is there a deeper desire to be loved and understood? Let us share that need with others, first of all with our Lord, our Lady, and our guardian angel. They will fill us. They will give us the necessary courage to share our poverty with others.

The MC charism

Mother Teresa, inspired by a call within a call from our Lord, founded the Missionaries of Charity (MC). The aim of the religious congregation is to labor for the salvation and sanctification of souls. The ultimate end of the society is to satiate the infinite thirst of Christ on the cross (Jn 19:28).

What was Christ thirsting for? Water, yes. But infinitely more for souls.

He thirsts to love and be loved. We satiate his thirst by loving Him.

But how to satiate Jesus' burning thirst? Where is his presence in the world today? Mother Teresa found an answer in the 25th chapter of Matthew's Gospel: whatever you did to the least of my brothers, you did it to me (Mt 25:40). You did it to me. We love Christ by loving Him in the least and the lost.


Who are the poor? Yes, those who hunger and thirst. But more than that--I am the poor. You are the poor. We find the poorest of the poor in the peripheries, and the peripheries are within us. As Mother Teresa would say, Calcutta is everywhere. It is a place of great beauty and a place of great suffering. Just like our heart. And so we come to know that there is a spiritual third world in every human heart.

Christ thirsts to be loved. And we can love him in the poorest of the poor. But what sustains such efforts? How do we learn to love? For we cannot give what we do not have. Of course, the answer is in another presence of Christ--the true presence in the Eucharist. It is at adoration that we encounter Christ's burning love for us that we share with others. Christ feeds us with the bread of life, that we may become that bread for others. When we recognize that we can love the poor and that the poor are the presence of Christ's love for us, all becomes prayer. All becomes grace.

No longer is there interior life and exterior apostolate. They become one. Working with the poor becomes adoration of Christ, and adoration of Christ in the Eucharist becomes the means of working for the salvation and sanctification of the poor.

In sum, Christ loves us so that we may love others. And in loving others, we become more open to sharing the love of Christ. It is an infinite cycle of love begetting love.

This is the life of an MC.