The word “unencumbered” is perhaps one of the most enlightening adjectives I can think of to describe the hearts of both St Francis and St Clare.
The dictionary defines unencumbered in the following way: not burdened, impeded, slowed down, retarded or weighed down; free to move, advance, or go forward. But my favorite is Cambridge dictionary’s definition that states: “without something making it difficult for you to do something”. St. Francis and St. Clare intuited the best means of doing “the something” they wanted to do, namely becoming true disciples of Jesus and being set free to love God, was through imitation of Christ’s kenosis, a Greek word meaning self-emptying, self-giving. Both saints sought to imitate the kenosis of Christ’s incarnation and therefore radically divest themselves of themselves through self-denial. Embracing this movement of the poverty of God, who became poor so that we might be rich, led them to a detachment from material goods but more importantly, enabled them to be freed from their attachment to their own wills. St Clare even wrote a hymn to blessed, holy, and God–centered poverty, “who bestows eternal riches on those who love and embrace her.” She continues by saying “God promises the kingdom of heaven and in fact offers glory and a blessed life to those who possess and desire you.” She then reveals why poverty is primary and foundational to our faith journey; because the Lord Jesus Christ…”condescended to embrace (poverty) before all else.” Poverty thus forms the very fabric and logic of Christianity, which reveals the Trinity as a dynamic and infinite out-pouring of love, as each person of the Trinity eternally and continuously empties themselves out, making themselves a perfect and total self-gift to each other.
St. Francis spontaneously stripped himself of all his clothing in front of the Bishop as a sign of his complete commitment to following the naked Christ. The confirmation of his vocation was grounded in the evangelical call to renounce all his possessions at the Porziuncula. It was there, where he would later ask to die naked, that a priest explained that Christ’s disciples ought to deny themselves by selling what they had and giving it to the poor so that they would have treasure in heaven and then, taking nothing for their journey– neither staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money, nor extra shirt, to take up their cross and follow Christ. St Francis responded by crying aloud, “This is what I wish, this is what I am seeking, this I desire with all my inmost heart to do.” This spirit of disappropriation allows one to travel in faith as “pilgrims and strangers” The wisdom of Meister Eckhart’s insight that spirituality is more a process of subtraction than addition, can be clearly seen in the invitation to live the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as three privileged means of following God. Each of these evangelical vows are meant to counteract sin which always has an “I” in the middle and therefore seeks to interiorly unencumber and free our selfish or selfcentred hearts to love. Francis embraced poverty as an antidote to concupiscence, the insatiable lust and greed for more, by warning his brothers in his second admonition to avoid appropriating to themselves their own will.
This extended to never priding themselves on the goods that the Lord publishes and work in them. True poverty then is always accompanied by its sister humility which supports and accepts everything, as the ego or “I” is stripped of all desire for self-affirmation. In this way one can escape the temptation of pride in accumulating accomplishments for oneself. Francis chose chastity as a means of freely loving others with a pure and uncluttered heart that avoids possession, attachment, or the temptation to use the other for my own good. Finally Francis knew obedience challenges us to deny the most precious gifts of God, our will and freedom and humbly surrender to Him, by listening for His voice and then lovingly doing His will rather then clinging to our own. St. Paul expresses this liberating experience of emptying ourselves in order to be filled with Christ by stating “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). I have witnessed this in several ways with the poor, who, because they are not surrounded and therefore so often encumbered and distracted by material things, are more easily and perhaps by necessity, more able to concentrate and focus on people. Because they are unable to find security in money or transient material things, they naturally gravitate to and learn to depend on their relationships of love.
They thus put their trust in the treasure of loving, personal relationships, which become the bed rock foundation and security of their lives. As a result, they are extraordinarily present to each other, and therefore present to God. I once heard someone say “The more we value things, the less we value ourselves and others.” In this way we see Ilia Delio, a Franciscan theologian’s insight that “The poor person is not the one in need of material things but the one in need of God and the one who needs God possesses God and to possess God is to possess all”. We at SCM are ever so grateful to all of you who care enough to help the poor. We are also aware that the poor, as Pope Francis continuously shows us, help evangelize us, by calling us out of ourselves, reminding us to love people and use things and never the other way around. We are profoundly aware that in our mission to alleviate the suffering and neglect of those who do not have a voice, allowing the poorest of the poor to know that someone cares for them and that God has not forgotten them, we are the first beneficiaries, who not only have the privilege of participating in such a noble service, but receive the grace of learning from them about how to unencumber our heart in order to make room for God and all people. Peace.
Source: silentchildrensmission.com/
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