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Chapter II

That the necessities of the body should be disregarded. Of the advantages of poverty.

1. Nuns should leave the care of their health to Christ. 2. Perpetual poverty to be maintained in the Order. 3. Safeguards against loss of poverty of spirit. 4. Advantages of poverty. 5. Honours and riches are opposed to poverty. 6. Poverty always the badge of the Carmelite Order. 7. The convents, though poor, may possess hermitages. 8. Intercession to be made for benefactors.

  1. Do not suppose, my sisters, that because you do not seek favour with the world you will be left to starve; I can reassure you about that. Never try to sustain yourselves by any human artifice, or you will perish of famine as you would deserve. Look to your Spouse; He must maintain you: if He is pleased with you, those who like you least will give you food even against their will, as you have learnt by experience.1 If when you have done this, you should die of hunger, happy the nuns of St. Joseph! Thus our prayers will be pleasing to God and we shall have carried out what we professed. For the love of God, do not forget this: as you have given up your revenues, give up the care of your sustenance as well or all will be lost. People whom our Lord wishes to possess incomes are quite right in looking after such matters, for that is their vocation, but it is inconsistent in us. To calculate what we shall receive from others seems to me like reckoning up their riches, and all your care will not change their minds nor make them wish to give you alms. Leave your case in the hands of Him Who bends all wills, Who is the Lord of riches and of rich men. We came here at His bidding: His words are sure and cannot fail; heaven and earth will fail first; let us not forsake Him, and never fear that He will forsake us. If at any time He did so, it would be for our greater good, as life forsook the saints when they were slain and beheaded for our Lord, that their glory might be increased by their martyrdom. It would be a good exchange to finish this life quickly so as to enjoy eternal satiety.

  2. Be certain, sisters, that this matter will be most important for you when I am dead, therefore I leave it you in writing. While I live, by the grace of God I will remind you of it, knowing by experience how great are its benefits. When I have least I am most free from anxiety, and God knows that, as far as I can tell, it grieves me far more when I am well cared for than when I am in want.2 I am not sure whether this has happened because I have always found that our Lord supplies our wants at once. We should be deceiving the world if we acted otherwise; if, having embraced poverty, we were not poor in spirit but only in externals. My conscience would prick me, as the expression is; it would seem like rich people asking for alms: God forbid that this should ever be done! Those who are so over-anxious about what will be given them will, some day or other, out of custom, ask for what they do not want and perhaps from people more needy than themselves. Although the latter will gain rather than lose by this yet we shall be the losers.

  3. May God prevent this ever happening, my daughters! If it were necessary, I should prefer your possessing an income. Never let your minds dwell on the subject: I ask this as an alms from you. Let the very last in the community, if she sees such a thing being done, cry out to God against it and go to the Prioress, humbly telling her that she is doing wrong.3 This is so important that otherwise, little by little, true poverty would be lost. I trust in God that it will never happen and that He will not abandon His handmaids: for this alone, if for no other reason, this book that you have bidden me write for you, wretched sinner as I am, may be of use by keeping you on the alert. I believe, my daughters, that it is for your sakes our Lord has taught me some of the benefits to be found in holy poverty, which those will discover who practise it, although perhaps not to the same extent as I have, for not only was I without poverty of spirit, although I had professed it, but I was prodigal in spirit.

  4. Poverty includes in itself all the good things of this world and a great part of the advantages of all the virtues as well, I believe. This I dare not assert, not knowing the value of each virtue, so I will not discuss what I do not thoroughly understand. But, in my opinion, poverty comprises many virtues. It is a vast domain. I affirm that whoever despises all earthly goods holds dominion over them. What are kings and lords to me if I do not want their money, nor seek to please them if by so doing I should displease God in the very least? What care I for their honours, if I know that the honour of a poor man consists in true poverty? It seems to me that honours and riches nearly always go together: he who loves honour never hates riches, while he who hates riches seeks no honours.

  5. You must understand this clearly; for I think that a thirst for honour always carries with it some regard for property and money; it is strange to see a poor man honoured by the world, for however much he may deserve it he generally remains unnoticed. True poverty, undertaken for the sake of God, bears with it a certain dignity in that he who professes it need seek to please no one but Him, and there is no doubt that the man who asks no help has many friends, as events have taught me. Much has been written on this matter that I could not understand, much less explain, but I confess that I was too engrossed by the subject to realise how foolish I was to discuss it. Now I am aware of it, I will be silent. But since I have said it, if it is well said, let it stand.

  6. For love of our Lord, since our badge is holy poverty, so highly esteemed and strictly practised at the foundation of our Order by our holy Fathers, that, as I was told by one who knew, they kept no provisions from one day to the other, let us, now that it is no longer observed so perfectly in exteriors, strive to practise it interiorly.4 Life lasts but two hours: the reward is immense, but, even without that, by following the counsels of our Lord the very imitating His Majesty in any way would be an ample recompense.

This must be the motto embroidered on our banners, which we must try to follow in our house, our clothes, our words, and, what is far more, in our hearts. With God's help while this is done, no fear lest religious observance should decay here for, as St. Clare used to say, poverty is a strong wall.5 With this, and with humility, she wished to surround her monasteries. True enough, if poverty is real it guards purity and all the other virtues better than do fine buildings. Keep to this, I beg of you, by the love of God and by His Blood. If, with a good conscience, I could wish that the day you build a costly dwelling it may fall and kill you all — I say, if I could do so with good conscience — I would wish it and beg God to grant it. It looks very ill, my daughters, to build fine houses with needy men's alms! God forbid it! ours should be poor and mean in every way.

Let us to this extent at least resemble our King. He had no home except the stable of Bethlehem where He was born, and the Cross where He died. Within these houses few luxuries could be found!

  1. Those who build large houses have their reasons for doing so and are led by religious motives, but any little corner does for thirteen poor women. If there should be any grounds (as there must be, on account of the enclosure and because they are a help to prayer and devotion), by all means let there be hermitages in which to retire for prayer, for weak human nature requires some indulgence; but let the convents be neither large nor handsome.6 God deliver us from such things! Remember, they must all fall down at the Day of Judgment, and who knows how soon that may be? It would not look well if the house of thirteen poor women made much noise when it tumbled, for the real poor make no commotion — they must be silent or none will pity them.

  2. How happy you will feel if some one is saved from hell by means of the alms he gave you!7 This is quite possible, for you are bound to pray constantly for the souls of those who maintain you.8 It is the will of God that, although all we have comes from Him, yet we should show gratitude to those through whom He gives it, and by no means must you neglect to do so. I cannot remember what I first began to speak about, for I have wandered from my subject. I think it must have been our Lord's wish as I never intended writing as I have done. May His Majesty always uphold us with His hand, so that we may never give up holy poverty! Amen.

Footnotes

  1. Life, ch. xxxvi. 25. Rel. ii. 2. Const. 9. Concep. ch. ii. 12; ch. iii. 5. ↩

  2. St. Teresa dearly loved poverty. She was about to make a foundation at Toledo with twelve thousand ducats left her by a rich merchant, but for certain reasons she was not able to come to an agreement with the persons responsible for the payment of this sum, at which she was greatly pleased, saying: 'Now that the money-god has been pulled down, I feel more hopeful that the foundation will be made'. (Fuente, vol. vi. 284, n. 15). From the Relation of Mother Mary of St. Joseph. ↩

  3. Castle, M. i. ch. ii. 21. Visit. 20, 21, 22, 34, 36. ↩

  4. Life, ch. xi. 3. ↩

  5. 'St. Clare often taught the sisters that the Order would be pleasing to God while endowed with poverty, and that it would always prosper as long as it was fortified by the tower of strictest poverty.' (Acta SS., Aug. 12). While founding the convent of St. Joseph at Avila, St. Teresa tells us: 'St. Clare appeared to me in great beauty and bade me take courage and go on with what I had begun; she would help me. I began to have a great devotion to St. Clare; and she has so truly kept her word, that a monastery of nuns of her Order in our neighbourhood helped us to live; and, what is of more importance, by little and little she so perfectly fulfilled my desire, that the poverty which the blessed Saint observes in her own house is observed in this and we are living on alms.' (Life, ch. xxxiii. 15.). ↩

  6. On Hermitages, Rule 2. Const. 34. Visit. 13. Found. ch. xiv. 4. Life, ch. xxxvi. 31. Sisters Isabel of St. Dominic and Teresa of Jesus say that the principal hermitages built by St. Teresa at St. Joseph's, Avila, were 1. Christ at the column, with St. Peter shedding tears of repentance; 2. The Annunciation; 3. St. Catherine of Alexandria; 4. St. Francis of Assisi; 5. St. Augustine; 6. St. Jerome, (in a subterranean grotto); 7. St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Sienna; 8. St. Hilarion; 9. St. Alexis. (Œuvres, vol. v. p. 42). ↩

  7. This happened in the case of Don Bernardino de Mendoza, brother of the Bishop of Avila, and founder of the convent of Valladolid. (Found. ch. x. 2). ↩

  8. Const. 24. Mother Agnes of Jesus says: 'Our holy Mother was so grateful that she told me she had never, till that day, forgotten to pray for a man who, in some poor village, had given her a cup of water when she was very thirsty.' (Fuente, vol. vi. 271). ↩

Chapter 3 of 43