Wilkie Au, S.J. 

CHAPTER SEVEN

BLESSED ARE THE POOR:
ENRICHMENT IN THE MIDST OF PRIVATION

Poverty as such has no value; it becomes meaningful insofar as it enriches others, after the example of Christ, who, "though he was rich, for your sake became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich" (2 Cor 8:9). (1)
 LADISLAS M. ORSY

MANY SOCIAL ILLS such as crime and violence are rooted in the degradation that results from poverty. Poverty often destroys individual dignity and like a cancer it can threaten human community. It is no wonder that it is seen as a public enemy and a disease we must battle. How, then, can poverty be regarded as a Christian virtue and an aid in our spiritual journey? What is the nature of the poverty that followers of Christ are calI ed to practice? Certainly, poverty cannot pose as a value if no enrichment accompanies it. According to theologian Ladislas Orsy, the poverty that the gospel promotes "is first a great enrichment, and secondly, a measure of sacrifice . . . If the element of enrichment is not there, poverty is not desirable." (2) Orsy emphasizes the positive without minimizing the reality of sacrifice. How poverty can be understood and practiced in ways that enhance Christian maturity is the focus of this chapter.

THE MANY FACES OF CHRISTIAN POVERTY

Like other complex realities, gospel poverty eludes a simple definition. And because it does not admit to a univocal understanding, heated debate easily erupts when anyone attempts too facilely to pinpoint its nature. Rooted in our personal experience of Jesus, Christian poverty finds diverse exemplars in such persons as Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, and Pope John XXIII. Thus, it is a rich spiritual reality that is embodied in varied and multiple forms. (3) A survey of its various modes reveals that reality from different perspectives.

POVERTY OF SPIRIT

A fundamental understanding of Christian poverty is called poverty of spirit or spiritual poverty. Acknowledging that to be human is to be poor before God and to rely radically on the Lord alone, poverty of spirit refers to our human condition, not to our economic state. It calls for a humble admission of our human limitation in the face of such existential realities as death, change, and loneliness. By stripping us of our illusion of self-sufficiency, spiritual poverty turns us toward God in expectation and trust.

It is based on the first of the Beatitudes, which contains Christ's promise that those who trust in God will be blessed, and on the texts that speak of the providence of God who knows what we need even before we ask (Mt 6:25-34; Lk 12:22-32). These passages invite us to surrender our lives into God's care. "Now if that is how God clothes the grass in the field which is there today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, how much more will he look after you, you . . . of little faith" (Lk 12:28). It challenges us to place ultimate trust in divine reliability, not on human resources. While not denying the importance of responsibly using our human talents and abilities to care for our world, it repudiates a godless mentality that relies more on military arsenals, savings accounts and insurance policies for security than on the living God. Spiritual poverty does not necessarily require living in destitution or neglecting to provide for the future. It means simply that our resources are not amassed in order to establish an arrogant self-sufficiency, but are allotted in a planned manner to enhance our relationship with God and others.

Poverty of spirit frees us from the idolatry of mammon, preventing us from making money and possessions false gods in which we entrust our total welfare. Christians ought not make wealth, or any other created thing, an absolute value. Theologian Karl Rahner warns of the danger of making absolute what is only relative, eternal what is merely transitory, and infinite what is of only finite worth. We lose our perspective on created things and no longer "take creatures seriously within the horizon of the Absolute." (4) Only God is absolute; all created things are good insofar as they help us reach the end for which we were created. A blind side exists in all of us that makes us fall for "this particular thing" as if our very life depended on it. "I just couldn't live without it!" is something we hear frequently. When we hear this from others, we recognize how silly it is to regard as ultimate what is ephemera!. Yet, we are often oblivious to this same foolishness when it afflicts us. We must always guard against this loss of perspective because it jeopardizes our journey back to God. It would be tragic to allow our attachment to a limited good to alienate us from infinite Goodness. The poor in spirit are blessed because they know that God alone can satisfy their hungry hearts.

Spiritual poverty is attained when our love relationship with God influences our attitude towards the material world. "Our personal relationships," states Orsy, "always affect and transform our relationship to the material world around US."5 An ordinary me al becomes a festive event at a family reunion. A loaf of homemade bread takes on special meaning when received as a gift on Valentine's Day. An ordinary wine is savored as if it were of vintage stock when shared by old friends at a school reunion. These examples show how the material world is transformed by personal relationships. In a similar way, God's love for us has an effect on our relationships with all other creatures. When there is a great love between God and us, our relation to the material world also undergoes a transformation. Some things lose their importance; others become rich in meaning. When God is our supreme value, all created beings are defined in reference to the divine, and our love of God determines the meaning and value of created goods. When creatures help us praise, reverence, and serve God, they are deemed good for us because they unite us to our Lord and creator. When they threaten our union with God, they become snares which endanger our spiritual growth.

LOVE FOR THE POOR

Solidarity with the poor and the exploited is another form of Christian poverty. This mode of poverty invites us to emulate Yahweh's love for the poor, the anawim. Because Yahweh has shown a special love for the poor and the oppressed (Is 61:1-2; Lk 4:18-19), we who strive for closeness to God must also keep the poor dose to our hearts. In the New Testament, Jesus openly declared that he carne to bring good news to the poor, and exhibited a special concern for those marked by deprivation (Mt Il:4-5). In the Beatitudes, he does not try to spiritualize away poverty which is a form of suffering. Given Jesus' compassionate care for the poor, we who wish to be imitators of Christ must also embrace those who claim such a tender spot in his heart. Moreover, our love for Christ must be demonstrated in our concrete acts of love for the poor and "the least" among us, with whom Christ identifies (Mt 25:31-46). As the Johannine teaching states, it is impossible to love God whom we have never seen, if we do not love our sisters and brothers whom we can see (I Jn 4:20).

Union with the poor and the oppressed requires a commitment to combat poverty as an evil that degrades the lives of many people. Material poverty is not a Christian ideal, but is rather a subhuman condition caused by our sinfulness and the selfish exploitation of the weak. Social injustice is therefore something to be eradicated through our efforts on behalf of the anawim. When we love the poor, our identification with them will grow; this increased identification will then rouse us from apathetic slumber and move us to act on their behalf. Identifying with others gives us a new vision. But this new vision involves a risk, for, as psychologist Robert Kegan puts it, "what the eye sees better the heart feels more deeply." He goes on to say, "W e not only increase the likelihood of our being moved; we also run the risks that being moved entails. For we are moved somewhere, and that somewhere is further into life, closer to those we live with. (6) Christians will be unable to hear the "cry of the poor" (Ps 9:1$ Job 34:28; Prov 21:1), unless they have greater personal experience of their miseries and distress.

Solidarity with the poor necessitates viewing reality from their perspective. It is only by removing the filters that influence our perceptions of social reality that we will truly be able to understand the plight of the poor. This empathic understanding is difficult to attain because our reactions to events are very much conditioned by our own class mentality. "One who claims to be free from class mentality," argues Jesuit Pedro Arrupe, "is rightly suspect. Only with great difficulty do we escape from the claims of class." (7) Only dose association with people outside of our own socioeconomic dass can liberate us from being encapsulated by the mentality and ethos of our milieu.

In order to help us cross the mental barriers that imprison us, Arrupe emphasizes the importance of dose contact with the poor by inserting ourselves into their context at least for a while. This experience will "enable us, at least for a time, to get away from a world in which we feel secure, perhaps even comfortable, and experience in our own flesh something of the insecurity, oppression and misery that is the lot of so many people today. Without such an experience, we cannot really claim to know what poverty is. (8)

Furthermore, we must enter these insertion experiences with a poverty of mind and heart that allows us to be receptive to new ideas and emotions. If our minds and hearts are already "preoccupied," there will be no room for receiving what others have to give us. Our humble openness creates a vacancy for others to enter our lives and to have a possibly transforming influence on us. A famous professor of religion at Tokyo University once approached a Zen master (roshi) and asked for instructions in meditation. Consenting to the request, the roshi first asked the professor to sit and have tea. The Zen master then began to fill the professor's cup halfway, then all the way to the brim. When the roshi continued to pour even after the tea began to overflow, the professor looked up with confusion. The Zen master then said, "If you really want to learn, you must bring an empty cup." If we want to learn from the poor about their plight, we too must bring an empty cup to our encounters with them.

SIMPLICITY OF LIFE AS WITNESS

Simplicity of life is another form of poverty closely associated with poverty as union with the poor. It fosters a singularity of focus making the advance of God's kingdom one's central concern. Preoccupation with doing the Lord's work frees those who practice simplicity of life from narcissistic concerns for a comfortable and easy lifestyle. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, makes clear the practical benefit of poverty to those trying to serve others:

Once we begin not to worry about what kind of house we are living in, what kind of clothes we are wearing, we have time, which is priceless, to remember that we are our brother's keeper, and that we must not only care for his needs as far as we are immediately able, but try to build a better world. (9)

Describing the rise of the Catholic W orker movement in the early 1930s, historian Mel Piehl comments on how the W orkers were helped by their voluntary poverty. Poverty sharpened their immediate sense of identification with the downtrodden, which, in turn, greatly intensified radical commitment. Moreover, their sense of sharp departure from the whole cluster of American values surrounding abundance and consumption constituted a significant critique of American society and made them less vulnerable to distraction and compromise. (10)

Poverty as simplicity requires that we do not confuse the necessities of life with what is luxurious. Quoting St. Ignatius, Arrupe warns that "we must take care not to start substituting the superfluous for the necessary, confusing what pleases us with what is good for us, and thus converting measures of prudence to excuses for self-indulgence. '' (11) Entitled "The Luxuries We Can't Do Without," an article reports the findings of a survey recently done for the Doyle Graf Raj advertising agency by the Roper Organization. Of the 600 adults surveyed (representing 100 households apiece in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Houston, and Los Angeles), 57 percent said they could not live without a microwave oven, 59 percent called their answering machines a necessity, 54 percent said they absolutely needed their home computers, and 36 percent considered their videocassette recorders indispensable. "What just a few years ago were clearly novelties or luxuries have today become necessities of speed and convenience," said the president of the company that initiated the study of households with annual incomes above $100,000. (12)

As a form of Christian poverty, simplicity stands as a counter-cultural challenge to a society steeped in the pursuit of comfort, power, and riches. It is an indictment of consumerism which implies that accumulating possessions is a good in itself. We are constantly barraged by this philosophy through advertising that invites us to surround ourselves with the newest and best of everything, as if salvation and happiness are only one more purchase away. The consumeristic spirit exposes how flawed our relationship to created things has become: what was meant by God to be a means to an end has become an end in itself. To curtail this distorted spirit, we must allow our personal relationship to God and our needy sisters and brothers around the world to transform our attitude toward the material world. Seeing the starvation and malnutrition of fellow human beings should move us from stockpiling to sharing.

In the gospels, Jesus states clearly that wealth is a serious obstacle to entering the kingdom of God (Lk 6:24; 12:16-21; 16:20f). Why does Jesus say this? It is not because he is trying to promote poverty for its own sake. Nor is it because he is trying to suggest contempt for the goods of this world. Rather, Jesus presents a straightforward message. What he says about riches follows from the commandment to love. It has to be very difficult for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of heaven because we must love our neighbor in order to gain eternal life; and when we do that, we do not have riches left over.

SHARING IN COMMUNITY

Communitarian sharing is another form of Christian poverty that is rooted in the experience of the early church: "The whole group of believers was united, heart and soul; no one claimed for his own use anything that he had, as everything they owned was held in common" (Acts 4:32; also 2:44-45; 4:36-37; 5:1-11). This shared ownership ensures its practitioners that no one is left in need and fosters a community whose members genuinely feel a close union of minds and hearts.

There is an "all for one and one for all" spirit associated with this ideal of Christian community. Its aim is to eliminate the difference between rich and poor and it emphasizes the equal worth of persons in the eyes of God. People are valued not because of their possessions, but their intrinsic worth grounded in God's love.

The common ownership of property in religious orders illustrates this form of Christian poverty. Without it, the bonds that unite religious communities would be eroded by privatistic and individual concerns. Thus, Ignatius of Loyola called poverty the f1rm wall of religion. The general erosion of community in modern life testif1es to the fact that private ownership tends to separate. "Private Property. Keep Out!" not only keeps us from trespassing onto others' property, it also prevents us from entering each other's lives in friendship and mutual care. Common ownership, on the other hand, fosters community by placing the common good at the center of our concern.

Lay Christians in increasing numbers are seeking to experience deeper forms of community living. Charismatic households and covenant communities, as well as communities of]esuit volunteers, L'Arche members and Catholic Workers are examples of such lay groups. From their struggles they have gradually realized the importance of poverty as communitarian sharing, as well as the debilitating effects of an excessive emphasis on individual ownership. Though not bound by a vow of poverty, they try to embody concretely the form of Christian poverty that calls for the sharing of goods and a concern for all in the community. It seems that it is precisely this spirit of communal love that continues every year to attract young people to join these groups.

POVERTY AS READINESS TO SERVE

Lastly, Christian poverty can take the form of apostolic availability or a readiness to help others. Service is the heart of this mode of poverty which invites us to put ourselves at the beck and call of others in need. The underlying attitude is that our possessions equip us to share and to serve. Recognizing a broader aspect of poverty than just what involves material goods, apostolic availability consists in placing our knowledge, talents, energy, and time at the disposal of others.

A dramatic illustration of poverty as availability can be seen in the story of Brian Willson who lost the lower portions of both legs when he was run over by a munitions train on September 2,1987. Willson and a group called Nuremberg Actions were trying to block munitions trains leaving the Concord Naval Weapon Station in Northern California. The trains, they claim, carry arms shipments bound for Central America. Feeling strongly that the sending of arms to Central America is "madness," Willson, who had just toured Nicaragua, protested, "If they want to murder they should go to Centrai America and look into the eyes of the mothers and children being killed with American bombs.'' (13) Brian Willson, a Vietnam veteran and practicing attorney, well exemplifies poverty as readiness for service because he was willing to give up so much for the lives of people unknown to him, solely on the principle that "the lives of Central Americans" are "no less important than his. " (14) Whether one is sympathetic to his political views or not, it must be admitted that his willingness to give up what he possessed, even his very life, for the welfare of others represents the spirit of poverty as apostolic availability. Many others, such as dedicated teachers and social workers who forsake larger salaries for the chance to serve, exemplify this form of poverty in daily and less dramatic ways.

Some religious view their vow of poverty as an avenue to increased availability for ministry. By dispossessing themselves of property and possessions, they hope to be free for the ready service of others. As Jesuits were reminded by a document on religious poverty, voluntary poverty is an attempt "to achieve that liberty from inordinate attachments, which is the condition of any great and ready love . . . this very liberty to love is in the service of the apostolate. " (15) Freedom to love is the ideal of poverty as apostolic availability. Of course, this ideal greatly depends on a spirit of interior detachment, which entails possessing a heart that is not captivated by created things. Detachment empties the heart of greed and makes it single-mindedly set on being sent to do the Lord's bidding.

In summary, a common characteristic of all forms of Christian poverty is its interpersonal nature. The meaning of created goods for Christians cannot be understood apart from our relationship to God and others. The significance of material things, for example, becomes clear when seen in reference to God. When we view created things in terms of our relationship to God, they can be regarded simultaneously as gifts from a loving creator, the means to attaining union with the Lord, and possible snares that retard our pilgrim's progress. Our attitude toward the material world is also shaped by our relationship with others. As dwellers of the earth, we were created, not to live in isolation, but to be united as grateful recipients of a common divine benefactor. Christian poverty requires us to acknowledge that all people on earth are brothers and sisters and to allow this familial connection to transform our appreciation and use of material goods. As members of the human community, we must enjoy the goods of the earth with an alert eye to the needs and welfare of others. In short, underlying all the modes of poverty we have discussed is the conviction that the things of the earth are for the sake of fostering union-our union with God and with each other. Hence, our relationship to the material world must be both aesthetical and ascetical. The aesthetical aspect ensures that we delight in the goodness and beauty of all created things. The ascetical aspect ensures our freedom to say "no" to certain material objects because of a "yes" we want to say to deeper desires. By preserving this freedom to say "yes" or "no" to created goods, we strengthen our ability to use creatures only in ways that deepen our relationship of love with God and others.

POVERTY, DEVELOPMENT, AND MATURITY

As with other virtues, growth in Christian poverty involves a gradual process, and is not something achieved all at once. Progress in living Christian poverty is' often blocked by psychological immaturity. For example, neurotic insecurity and narcissism foster hoarding rather than sharing. On the other hand, growth in Christian poverty will not only make us better Christians, but can also contribute to our psychological development as persons-a clear instance of how holiness and wholeness need not be incompatible. By examining some of the findings of developmental psychology, we can deepen our appreciation of how Christian poverty contributes to healthy development.

A basic issue that divides developmental psychologists into clearly distinct schools of thought revolves around a fundamental question: Is there a general and universaI trajectory that self-changes and "growth" follow over the span of a lifetime? One group's answer is negative. These psychologists such as L. Edward Wells and Sheldon Stryker rest their position on the presumption "that the evolution of selves through the life course is characterized by variability and fluidity." (16) What is usually presented as the generalized life course, they argue, merely represents a rather idealized summary of the numerous and diverse patterns out of which individuals construct their lives. (17) Another school of thought, however, maintains that there are distinct and universal sequences of stages, crises, and forms through which all normal selves develop. In this group of structural-developmental psychologists are such names as Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Robert Kegan. Erikson and Kegan have articulated theories that assert an invariant, underlying order for changes in self-concept during one's life-self-concept being, in Kegan's phrase, "a more or less consistent sense of a me." They argue, in other words, that there is a natural "deep structure" of self-development.

Kegan has suggested what that underlying structure is by indicating six different levels of subject-object relations throughout the lifespan. According to him, we are never just individuals, but people always embedded in a "holding environment."

The person is an "individuaI" and "embeddual." There is never just a you; and at this moment your own buoyancy or lack of it, your own sense of wholeness or lack of it, is in large part a function of how your own current embeddedness culture is holding you. (18)

Subject-object relations refer to the individual's relationship to his or her holding environment, the psychosocial setting that at each stage sustains the construction of the self. Development involves a sequence of six stages or "evolutionary truces" by which we try to find the proper balance between being distinct as individuals and being embedded in a holding culture. These structural stages describe the way we currently make meaning of our experiences. Stages are benchmarks, and we live in the motion around these benchmarks. Kegan sheds light on the self-in-motion in those transitional moments in our lives when our meaning-structures begin to slip and we find ourselves caught in the balance between our "new" and our "old" selves. At these inevitable moments in the course of development when we begin to outgrow our ways of making meaning, we become vulnerable to a breakdown in meaning that may occasion a crisis in the very construction of self.

Through case studies, Kegan shows concretely how these stage transitions show up in real life. For instance, Terry, a 16-year-old who has been hospitalized, illustrates someone defending a rigid "imperial" construction of self (the second stage in Kegan's developmental scheme). She frustrates her therapists by refusing to join in milieu therapy because it requires a sharing of feeling that threatens the integrity of her current, constricted way of making meaning. At the third stage, Kegan presents Eric, a depressed college freshman who wants to escape from his dormitory room and return home to his parents. His "interpersonal" construction of self is so embedded in his relationship with his family that he feels rejected and confused when his parents suggest that he remain at college even though he is homesick.

Kegan believes that growth along the developmental stages occurs when we are able to let go of our present holding environment and move beyond to another one which is broader and allows for more personal expansion. In other words, the self grows by its emergence from embeddedness. Some examples of these cultures of embeddedness from which we must advance are: our mother or primary caretaker in infancy; parents in the family triangle in early childhood; authority figures and peers in school; friends, colleagues at work and love relationships. As we develop, we need to dis-identify ourselves from our embedded culture or holding environment by a shift in self-consciousness. We need to shift from "I am my family" to "I have a family," from "I am my relationships" to "I have relationships." Throughout life, we are "hatched out" over and over again from one holding environment to another. One of the powerful features of Kegan's constructive-developmental approach to the study of the person is that it "reconceives the whole question of the relationship between the individual and the social by reminding that the distinction is not absolute, that development is intrinsically about the continual settling and resettling of this very distinction. " (19)

Each of the developmental stages, Kegan maintains, is an evolutionary truce, setting the terms on the fundamental issue regarding how distinct we are from our life surroundings and how embedded. It is a temporary solution to the lifelong tension between the yearning we all experience for inclusion and for distinctness. (20) Throughout the course of life there is a continual moving back and forth between resolving the tension slightly in favor of autonomy at one stage, and in favor of inclusion at the next. However, the desirable direction of development, according to structural-developmentalists, is clearly towards new forms of openness and inclusion.

Because his model recognizes the equal dignity of the human yearning for both autonomy and inclusion, Kegan feels that it can be "a corrective to all present developmental frameworks which univocalIy define growth in terms of differentiation, separation, increasing autonomy, and lose sight of the fact that adaptation is equally about integration, attachment, inclusion. " (21) Along with Kegan, feminist psychologists like Carol Gilligan criticize the myopic outlook that would identify differentiation (the stereotypicalIy male overemphasis in the human ambivalence between autonomy and inclusion) with growth and development, while viewing integration (the stereotypicalIy female overemphasis) as dependency and immaturity. (22)

That the overemphasis on autonomy in self-development needs to be redressed by placing greater value on communion with others is supported by the findings of Abraham Maslow. The father of humanistic psychology, Maslow did extensive research on healthy people who were thriving in their lives and work. In his study of these "self-actualizing" persons, he discovered that the move toward self-actualization involves a move toward becoming, among other things: more possessed of gemeinshaftsgefuhl (a feeling for the worldwide familyhood of alI); more deeply experiencing of interpersonal relationships; more transcendent of particular culture. (23) That such people are especially capable of practicing poverty as compassionate solidarity with the poor and the oppressed could be easily argued.

GROWTH AS REBIRTHING

This brief excursus into developmental theory enables us now to see how striving to live gospel poverty not only makes us better Christians, but also stimulates our upward movement on the developmental ladder. Kegan understands "person" to refer as much to an activity as to a thing-"an ever progressive motion engaged in giving itself a new form. " (24) Personal development thus requires the continual acquisition of "a new form" by which the self is understood. Growth toward maturity, according to Kegan, can be seen when individuals abandon the limited holding environment which has influenced their present self-definition and acquire a wider holding environment which challenges them to redefine themselves in broader ways-ways that allow for more attachment and inclusion, while preserving one's autonomous identity .

Similarly, Jesus identified spiritual growth with the acquisition of new forms through a process of rebirth. In challenging Nicodemus to be born again or from above (the Greek word, anothen, can mean both), Jesus outlined the nature of growth for all Christians (Jn 3:1-10). Kegan's developmental theory supplies concreteness to what this continual rebirth entails for us who are striving to enter the Kingdom of God. The Spirit of God must be allowed to penetrate our hard-shelled encapsulation and shatter our self-containment so that new life can sprout forth at developmental intervals. Rebirth, at each point, comes with the death of the encapsulated ego.

Long associated with Kegan at Harvard Graduate School of Education, developmentalist Lawrence Kohlberg is widely known for his stages of moral reasoning. Unlike Kegan's wider focus on ego development, Kohlberg restricted his research to the development of moral reasoning. Although the important question of whether people tend to exercise moral judgment in real life situations as they do in paper-and-pencil interviews was not fully addressed by Kohlberg, his developmental scheme is useful in spelling out what the Christian rebirthing process entails in terms of moral development. When we examine his six stages, we can see a movement from egocentric reasons for moral decisions in stages one and two (avoiding punishment and benefitting from pragmatic exchange) to social reasons in stages three, four, and five (having a reputation as a "good person," upholding the social order, and fulfilling one's social contracts) to motives based on universal ethical principles like justice in stage six. In this movement, the dynamic flow is from encapsulated self-concern, to concern for the social order based on self-interest, and finally to concern for what is right based on universal principles without any reference to subjective factors of personal gain.

Similar to the developmental schemes of both Kegan and Kohlberg, Christian poverty in its various forms calIs for a progressive expansion of our self-understanding. For example, poverty of spirit, born out of an honest self-assessment done in the solitude of one's soul, is our humble acknowledgment that each of us relies radically on God for existence and happiness. However, poverty as communitarian sharing, by introducing a social dimension to poverty, turns our gaze from ourselves to others. Its requirement of communal sharing requires that we move from seeing ourselves as isolated, atomized selves to appreciating our essential connection with others in the Christian family. Then, when poverty as solidarity with the poor and the oppressed is taken seriously, we are challenged to an even broader self-definition. The holding environment from which our new self-definition is to come expands from our local Christian community to the community of the global village. The movement required by these various forms of Christian poverty necessitates an ever-expanding sense of self: from being an isolated individual to being a member of a nuclear family to being a member of a Christian community related by belief, not blood, and finally to being a member of a uni versaI family founded on the Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. The self expands because it is progressively defined in relation to ever larger entities." (25) "Psychological and spiritual health," states Sam Keen, "does not consist in having no self but in keeping the process of self-formation flowing, of continually enlarging the images by which we understand ourselves and our world. " (26) Faith assures us that the ultimate holding environment destined for all who love God will be the community constituted by a triune God in whom we will be forever blissfully embedded. The call to Christian holiness, then, is an invitation to be embedded in God. Jesus' principal mission was to lead us to holiness, to show us the way to this embeddedness in God. The pedagogy used by him to teach us the path to life with God is welI illustrated in the "Two Standards" meditation of Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises. (27) An analysis of this meditation will show the key importance of poverty in the pedagogy of Christ.

POVERTY AND THE PEDAGOGY OF CHRIST

The meditation on the Two Standards is basically an instruction on the discernment of spirits. It contains Ignatius' understanding of how Christ leads people to holiness and how Lucifer, "the deadly enemy of our human nature," ensnares them. Ignatius' insights into the process of Christian growth have for centuries been recognized by the church as a perennial wisdom transcending the limitation of his own religious culture. Thus, modern readers should not become distracted by his historically conditioned language. As a contemporary spiritual writer states:

The theology of the Exercises is not dependent on Ignatius' medieval world-view of angels and devils. His use of the two spirits struggling for dominance in the soul is the imagery of the times. But the meaning is the biblical struggle between . . . grace and sin. . . the inevitable war between the forces of good and evil. Ignatius' angelology and demonology are beside the point. (28)

The term "standards" is best understood here as placards or banners, such as those used by opposing forces in a medieval battle. In this meditation, Ignatius illustrates how Christ attracts followers to join him and how Lucifer allures through artifice.

Ignatius lays out the opposing strategies of these two leaders this way. On the one hand, Lucifer entices people to his cause by tempting them "to covet riches . . . that they may the more easily attain the empty honors of this world, and then come to overweening pride." Through these three steps of riches, honor, and pride, the evil one leads us to all other vices. On the other hand, Christ encourages those who desire holiness to seek poverty and "a desire for insults and contempt, for from these spring humility." Corresponding to the three-prong attack of Lucifer, Christ's counterattack calls for three steps: poverty as opposed to riches; insults as opposed to worldly honor; and humility as opposed to pride. Through these three steps, Christ leads us to all other virtues.

An analysis of this meditation reveals the psychological and spiritual wisdom contained in Ignatius' insight into the opposing pedagogies of Christ and Lucifer. Christ's goal is to unite us to God, while Lucifer's aim is to sever the bonds that link us to God. Christ leads us to God by helping us come to a true understanding of our identity as people who are absolutely dependent on and unconditionally loved by God. On the other hand, Satan alienates us from God, by deluding us into thinking of ourselves as totally self-sufficient entities who are neither dependent nor indebted to God for anything. In essence, what is involved is a matter of self-definition. Do we see ourselves as creatures and therefore as correlative beings, whose identity cannot be understood apart from a  creator? Or do we see ourselves as freestanding entities, definable in a way that is totalIy independent of God? A brief look at the process of self-definition will help us understand the underlying dynamics of the opposing strategies of Christ and Satan.

THE PROCESS OF SELF-DEFINITION

The process of self-definition enables us to know that we are who we are and that we are of some worth. We have to use conceptual terms to describe this process, but it is not primarily an intellectual operation. Rather, it is more a psychological experience that is very much bound up with the sentiments, images, and emotional responses that spontaneously define us for ourselves. None of us comes into the world with a subjective knowledge of ourselves, much less with an appreciation of ourselves. This knowledge emerges gradually over time, as Kegan and other psychologists illustrate through their various theories of ego development.

In the process of coming to know who we are and of feeling ourselves as distinct from alI our experiences, the initial experience is that of the domination of the material. Observing an infant, we see that the baby can shove and kick the blanket and the blanket cannot kick back. The beginning of growth of the ego consists in this experience of domination and then possession of the material. "That's mine!" is a constant refrain of the two-year-old child. For the child, "That's mine!" means at the same time "I am." In this early stage, the definition of the ego is in terms of material possessions. In other words, the "I am" is defined in terms of the "I have."

A further experience in the definition of the psychological ego comes with the experience of being loved. As children we come to know that we amount to something and are valuable, because the world of adults, which is our criterion of knowledge, bends down in affection upon uso We know that we are lovable because we are loved. It is no wonder that children who suffer severe affective deprivation at the hands of frigid or psychologically disturbed parents barely know that they exist. Some of these unaffirmed people later seek to validate themselves through various means: by amassing material riches, by striving for achievement in work and community affairs, or by acquiring status symbols ranging from cars to academic degrees. "But all these attempts at self-affirmation," contend psychiatrists Conrad Baars and Anna Terruwe, "are futile." (29)

These attitudes about ourselves originating from our infantile existence are transferred to our lives as adults. As adults, then, we find ourselves inhabiting hostile worlds, or challenging worlds, or kind worlds-depending on how our initial experiences have shaped our attitudes about ourselves. This step in the definition of self is profoundly modified for Christians who live according to their faith. This is because the central message of Jesus is that all of us are called to experience ourselves of worth because of our realization of God's love for us.

TO BE EMBEDDED IN GOD

This realization of God's love is the final step in the process of self-definition for Christians. Here we ground our value on the very basis of who and whose we are, as those loved by a God whose faithfulness is unshakable: "Does a woman forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you. See, I have branded you on the palms of my hands" (Is 49:14-16). God's love is what causes us to be and to be of worth. Our experiences of possessing things or being loved by others may reassure us of our value as individuals; but they neither constitute our value nor account for our existence. Only God's love does both. Therefore, we can define ourselves adequately only in reference to our relationship to God. This is the truth of our lives. To be is to be embedded in God, for it is in God that "we live, and move, and exist" (Acts 17:28).

Given this process of self-definition, the logic of Satan's seductive scheme for alienating us from God can be laid out clearly. Basically, what the evil spirit does is to appeal to the remnants of our infantile stages. Satan tempts us by urging us to continue to define ourselves in terms of material possessions and social recognition. By tempting us to amass great wealth, which leads to our growing in stature in the eyes of the world, Satan's strategy is ultimately to pus h us to the point of pride. Pride consists in defining ourselves and human values in a way that is independent of God. The logic of Satan is clear: riches will lead to honors, which, in turn, will delude us into thinking that we are totally sufficient unto ourselves. Pride is essentially the building of a false self. The falsest thing that we can say about ourselves as creatures is that we are independent, that all we are and all we hope to be does not depend upon God. But, by keeping our attention on riches and honors, the two pillars upon which our false personality is constructed by pride, the evil spirit keeps us from the truth of our dependence on God. When we become forgetful of God, we have been effectively entrapped by the evil spirit.

Strangely, the opposing strategy of Christ to protect us from "the enemy of our human nature" is one that goes against all of our natural inclinations. Christ calls us to poverty, humiliations, and a knowledge of God's love. Christ's strategy involves a double emancipation. Poverty emancipates the ego from dependence upon material things. Humiliations emancipate the ego from dependence upon the recognition and approval of others. This twofold emancipation enables us to base our definition of ourselves on the realization of God's love. When we have done this, we have arrived at the ultimate truth about ourselves: that we have life and are valuable as persons because of God's unconditional love for us. As scripture attests, God's love upholds our being. If God did not deem us worthy, he would not sustain us in existence. "Yes, you love all that exists, you hold nothing of what you have made in abhorrence, for had you hated anything, you would not have formed it. And how, had you not willed it, could a thing persist, how be conserved if not called forth by you? You spare all things because all things are yours, Lord, lover of life!" (Wis 11:24-27). The pedagogy of Christ thus leads us to humility, which is a gratefuI acknowledgment that God, in Kegan's phrase, is the ultimate holding environment in which we can truly understand who we are. In this Ignatian scheme, Christ-like poverty is the gateway to the truth of our identity as people called to exist in loving relationship to God.

Poverty, by stripping us of all the facades that we use to buttress an insecure sense of self, enables us to be simply who we are and to receive God's gratuitous love as unearned gift. Paradoxically, this childlike simplicity takes a lifetime to achieve. As human beings, we are so radically beset by self-doubt about our essential goodness and value that we are constantly fortifying a weak self-worth by identifying with "other things." These things are of infinite variety. They can be our looks, talents, degrees, possessions, reputations, careers, performance and even our health. We glory in these things that seem to bolster our worth. Some workaholic adults, for example, may at first glance seem to illustrate Erikson's stage of generativity. But a closer look often reveals that they are really in the pre-adolescent stage of industry because they are identifying with their work to compensate for a poor sense of personal identity. We cling to things that seemingly assure our worth. Poverty requires our giving up this desperate clinging. It requires an ongoing dis-identification, whereby we say, "I have talents (looks. possessions, etc.), but I am not my talents (looks, possessions)."

As Christians, we must separate ourselves from these things that conceal the essential self. While these "other things" are deeply personal, they nonetheless are still other than who we are at the very core of our being. As theologian Karl Rahner puts it, "This type of separation from self is one of the main tasks of the Christian-and it takes a whole life to complete it. It is a necessary part of the road to Christian sanctity. " (30) This letting-go process allows us to enjoy a peaceful kind of freedom in our relationship to the material world. We can be at peace in having or not having. An Indian tale told by Anthony de Mello captures the nature of this letting-go process and the rich freedom it begets.

The sannyasi had reached the outskirts of the village and settled down under a tree for the night when a villager came running up to him and said, "The stone! The stone! Give me the precious stone!" "What stone?" asked the sannyasi.

"Last night the Lord Shiva appeared to me in a dream," said the villager, "and told me that if 1 went to the outskirts of the village at dusk 1 should find a sannyasi who would give me a precious stone that would make me rich forever."

The sannyasi rummaged in his bag and pulled out a stone. "He probably meant this one," he said, as he handed the stone over to the villager. "I found it on a forest path some days ago. You can certainly have it."

The man looked at the stone in wonder. It was a diamond. Probably the largest diamond in the whole world for it was as large as a man's head.

He took the diamond and walked away. All night he tossed about in bed, unable to sleep. Next day at the crack of dawn he woke the sannyasi and said, "Give me the wealth that makes it possible for you to give this diamond away so easily." (31)

When we relinquish all that is not essential to our basie identity as people utterly cherished by God, we slay the dragon of compulsive acquisition and free ourselves to receive the wealth of God's affirming love.

POVERTY AND NECESSARY LOSSES

In our discussion of poverty as a stimulus to human growth, much reliance was placed on the findings of developmental psychologists sue h as Kegan and Kohlberg. Recently, however, Judith Viorst, writing from a psychoanalytic background, has expounded a theory that provides further psychologieal endorsement of Christian poverty as a growthful stance in life. "The road to human development," states Viorst, "is paved with renunciation. Throughout our life we grow by giving up. " (32) Her central thesis is that loss is a far more encompassing theme in our lives than we realize. We deal with loss not only through the death of people we love, but we also lo se through separations and departures from family and friends. Furthermore, our losses include "our losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety-and the loss of our own younger self, the self that thought it always would be unwrinkled and invulnerable and immortal." (33) Unavoidable and inexorable, these losses are a part of life. The beginning of wisdom and hopeful change, Viorst contends, comes with recognizing that growth comes from responding to these losses in constructive ways. Peaceful acceptance of these inevitable losses leads to the possibility of creative growth. Resentment and resistance, on the other hand, inevitably lead to despair in the face of the fleeting and ephemeral nature of our human condition.

The story of the Taoist farmer, recounted in the writings of LaoTzu, illustrates well the dance of life's events and how losses can yield new gains. For Christians, the story serves as a reminder of the need to stay open always to our mysterious God, who often writes straight with crooked lines.

The farmer's horse ran away. That evening the neighbors gathered to commiserate with him since this was such bad luck. He said, "Maybe." The next day the horse returned, but brought with it six wild horses, and the neighbors carne exclaiming at his good fortune. He said, "Maybe." And then, the following day, his son tried to saddle and ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his lego Again the neighbors carne to offer their sympathy for his misfortune. He said, "Maybe." The day after that, conscription officers carne to the village to seize young men for the army. But because of the broken leg the farmer's son was rejected. When the neighbors carne to say how fortunately everything had turned out, he said, "Maybe. " (34)

Throughout the vicissitudes of life, "we grow by losing and leaving and letting go." (35) A more explicitly Christian formulation of this philosophy is one of the most well-known adages of Alcoholics Anonymous: we grow by "letting go and letting God." This conviction of recovering alcoholics stems from a deep sense of spiritual poverty. Step One of the 12-step recovery program is a frank admission that "we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable." (36) Step Two states that "we carne to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." And step Three involves a "decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God." Although not every Christian suffers from an addiction to alcohol, all are nonetheless called to stand before God with the same kind of spiritual poverty and humble admission of the need for God's saving power. Dealing with the inevitable losses of our lives can easily make our situation seem unmanageable and even bring us to the brink of despair. At such times, we must remember that the pattern of death and resurrection is to be the form of our lives-just as it was in Jesus' life. Jesus promised that if we submit with faith to diminishment and death, God will always bring about enrichment and new life:

I tell you, most solemnly, unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest. Anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for the eternal life (Jn 12:24-25).

While Viorst provides a good phenomenological description of the necessary losses of human life, it is the gospel that proclaims the good news of God's intervention to renew life wherever there is loss in any form. As Christians we are not left merely with loss, but always with new life. Our experiences of loss serve to deepen a longing rooted in the human spirit-a yearning that will only be satisfied when we see God face to face in the heavenly Jerusalem, where "there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness" (Rev 21:4).

CONCLUSION

In the Constitutions of their order, Jesuits are told by their founder, St. Ignatius, to "love poverty as a mother, and . . . when occasions arise, feel some effects of it." (37) Viewing poverty as a mother serves to highlight the fact that Christian poverty is meant to be a practice that is productive. Authentic Christian poverty should not diminish the joy in living but add to it by giving birth to new forms of sharing, caring, and community. If striven for with an attitude of faith and love, poverty should, in the course of a lifetime, stretch us from the narrow egocentrism of an infant to the universal altruism of a Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The effects of voluntary poverty-in all its various forms as poverty of spirit, simplicity of life, communitarian sharing, union with the poor and oppressed, and readiness for service-can, with the help of grace, transform us into the image of Christ, who though rich became poor for our sakes, so that by his poverty we might become rich. In this transformation, we will be enriched by mother poverty.