Following Jesus in Poverty

Following Jesus in Poverty

F. Franco
The death of Jesus is undoubtedly the most important theological and hermeneutical statement on poverty. The identification with the poor leads inexorably to sharing in their unjust death, and this is simultaneously the process by which the self dies to itself.
The resurrection of Jesus confirms, in hope beyond hope, that this dual way of being poor is wholly liberative and life-giving. Moksa, liberation, is both the liberation of the poor and of the self. They go together. Self emptying cannot be planned and calculated, it is enforced. Surrender to the poor combines both: it demands a liberative self emptying, it offers the poor a solidarity that is liberative. Thus this liberation happens in the solitude of the heart and in the turmoil of social involvement. It is the result of both self-abnegation but also the result of self‑gift.
At another level, the death and resurrection of Jesus decode finally the mystery of what a human being is, and by so doing provide us with an answer to the question of who or what God is: a love that empties itself to give life. In short, the understanding of Jesus’ mission as the proclamation of the Kingdom to the poor determines essentially from the start that the ‘following of Jesus’ is linked inextricably with the following of him ‘in poverty’.
This link is finally sealed by the perceived connection between Jesus’ death and resurrection: when we discover that the power to give life flows from the vulnerability of his death.
If the understanding of the mission of Jesus as the proclamation of the Kingdom to the poor was essential to realize from the start the meaning of ‘following Jesus’, then the acceptance of the close connection between death and resurrection is the ultimate criterion to authenticate the practice of following him in poverty.

From The Practice of Love (1991)