Freedom in Poverty. Wednesday, April 9. Lent 2014.

Montfort participated in literal poverty

in order to experience freedom.

His poverty was voluntary and evangelical.

It did not impoverish; it enriched.

The paradoxes continue.

“Like Jesus, he had nowhere to lay his head, no social, geographical stability. This can be called insecurity or loneliness, or it can be called freedom.”

Most would pity Montfort.

But in his life of poverty,

he did not feel impoverished,

rather he felt liberated.

He chose voluntarily to be a slave to Christ

out of love for Christ,

not because he was forced.

We all have things that get in the way of

a pure and total relationship with God.

For Montfort,

it was material possessions,

so he did away with them.

Maybe for you it might be TV

and for me it might be getting carried away with my thoughts.

Food might keep your neighbor from God

while judgments keep the man down the street away from God.

We all have things,

tangible or not,

that keep us from totally dependence on God.

We cannot be fully dependent on God

if half of our dependence lies within our vice.

“It is scriptural truism that possessions enslave; we cannot be the slave of God and mammon. If we choose God then money serves us, not we money.”

Or whatever is keeping you from Him.

Money, people, thoughts, TV, judgments, whatever it may be.

Let’s get rid of those things.

Let’s live in poverty.

Let’s live a life where we choose God

and where we are completely dependent on God.

For it is then,

in voluntary slavery to Him,

that we find true liberation,

true freedom.

This Lenten blog series is based upon St. Louis de Montfort's writings. Unless otherwise noted, all the phrases in quotation marks are taken from the book Jesus Living in Mary.