In today's Gospel passage Jesus proposes to those who want to follow him a real poverty of living and ready detachment from the demands of kinship.
Francis of Assisi fell in love with Our Lady Poverty from the very beginning and never separated himself from her, teaching his brothers to do likewise.
The Franciscan Sources offer countless passages on this subject.
We propose a few.
"While in this vale of tears, the blessed father despised the poor riches common to the sons of men and aspired wholeheartedly to poverty, desiring higher glory.
And since he observed that poverty, while it had been intimate to the Son of God, was almost rejected by all the world, he longed to marry her with eternal love.
Therefore, in love with her beauty, in order to adhere more strongly to his bride and be two in one spirit, he not only left father and mother, but detached himself from everything.
From then on he held her in chaste embraces and not for a moment did he accept that he was not her husband.
He repeated to his children that this is the way to perfection, this is the pledge and guarantee of eternal riches.
No one was so greedy for gold, as he was for poverty, nor was anyone more concerned about guarding a treasure, than he was the gospel gem.
In this he was particularly offended, if in the brothers - either at home or outside - he saw anything contrary to poverty.
And indeed, from the beginning of his religious life until his death, he had as his wealth a single cassock, girdle and breeches: he had nothing else.
His poor appearance clearly indicated where he accumulated his wealth.
For this reason, happy, confident, agile in his race, he enjoyed having exchanged for a good worth a hundred times the riches destined to perish" (FF 641).
Convinced that the precarious condition brought one closer to that of Christ in a special way, he blessed almsgiving and considered it characteristic of becoming lesser according to the Gospel.
In the Major Legend:
"Sometimes, exhorting the brothers to seek alms, he used arguments of this kind:
"Go, for in these very last times the Friars Minor have been given on loan to the world, to enable the elect to perform in them the works by which they deserve the praise of the Supreme Judge and that most sweet assurance:
'Whenever you have done it to one of these lesser brothers of mine, you have done it to me'".
"Therefore," he concluded, "it is good to go begging under the title of 'lesser brothers', a title that the Master of truth has indicated in the Gospel with such precision, as the reason for eternal reward for the just" (FF 1128).
And in the Rule of St Clare:
"And so that we might never depart from the most holy poverty which we embraced, nor those which would come after us, shortly before his death he again wrote his last will for us in these words:
"I, little brother Francis, wish to follow the life and poverty of our Most High Lord Jesus Christ and his most holy Mother, and to persevere in it to the end.
And I beseech you, my Lord, and advise you that you live always in this most holy life and poverty.
And be very careful never to depart from it in any way by the teaching or advice of anyone" (FF 2790).
"The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" (Mt 8:20).
Monday of the 13th wk. in O.T. (Mt 8,18-22)
