The Richness of Poverty

Choose the richness of poverty, the wealth of the poor.  So what is this poverty with which Christ frees us and enriches us?  It is his way of loving us, his way of approaching us, just as the Good Samaritan approached the man left half dead by the side of the road (Luke 10:25).  What gives us true freedom, true salvation, and true happiness is the compassion, tenderness, and solidarity of his love.  The poverty of Christ enriches us, for he became flesh and he bears our weaknesses and sins as an expression of God’s infinite mercy.  Christ’s poverty is the greatest treasure of all: Jesus’ wealth is his boundless confidence in God the Father, his constant trust, his desire always and only to do the Father’s will and give glory to him.  Jesus is rich in the same way as a child who feels loved and who loves her parents, a child who never doubts their love and tenderness.  Jesus’ wealth lies in being the Son; his unique relationship with the Father is the sovereign prerogative of this impoverished Messiah.  When Jesus asks us to take up his “yoke, which is easy,” he asks us to be enriched by his “poverty, which is rich” and by his “richness, which is poor,” to share his filial and fraternal Spirit, to become sons and daughters in the Son, brothers and sisters to the firstborn Brother (Romans 8:29).

– Message for Lent, 2014, by Pope Francis (pub. in Happiness in This Life)