SELL
EVERYTHING
The
tragic paradox implied in wealth justifies the advice given by Jesus to those
who wish to follow Him. (Matt. 19:21;
Mark 10:21; Luke 18:22)
They all
should give whatever they have beyond their needs to those in want. But the
rich man should give everything. To the young man who comes up to ask Him what
he ought to do to be among His followers, Jesus answers: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give
to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." (Matt 19:21) Giving away wealth is not a
loss or a sacrifice. Instead of this, Jesus knows and all those know who
understand mankind and wealth that it is a magnificently profitable
transaction, an incommensurable gain. "Sell
whatsoever thou halt and give to the poor and thou shalt have treasure in
heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break
through nor steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow from thee, turn
not thou away, for it is more blessed to give than to receive."
Men must
give and give without sparing, light-heartedly and without calculation. He who gives
in order to get something back is not perfect. He who gives in order to
exchange with others, or for other material things, acquires nothing. The reward
is elsewhere, it is in us. Things are not to be given away that they may be
paid for by other things, but by purity and contentment alone. "When thou makest a dinner or a supper
call not thy friends nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen nor thy rich
neighbors, lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But
when thou makest a feast call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind; and
thou shalt be blest, for they cannot recompense thee, for thou shalt be
recompensed at the resurrection of the just." (Luke 14:14)
Even before Jesus' time men had been advised to renounce wealth. Jesus
was not the first to find in poverty one of the steps to perfection. The great
Vaddhamana, the Jain, or triumpher, added to the commandments of Parswa,
founder of the Freed, the doctrine of the renunciation of all possessions.
Buddha, his contemporary, exhorted his disciples to a similar renunciation. The
Cynics stripped themselves of all material goods to be independent of work and
of men, and to be able to consecrate their freed souls to truth. Crates, the
Theban nobleman, disciple of Diogenes, distributed his wealth to his
fellow-citizens and turned beggar. Plato wished the warriors in his Republic to
have no possessions. Dressed in purple and seated at tables inlaid with rare
stones, the Stoics pronounced eloquent eulogies on poverty. Aristophanes puts
blind Pluto on the stage distributing wealth to rascals alone, almost as though
wealth were a punishment.
But in Jesus the love of poverty is not an ascetic rule, nor a proud
disguise for ostentation. Timon of Athens, who was reduced to poverty after
having fed a crowd of parasites with indiscriminate generosity, was not a poor
man as Christ would have men poor. Timon was poor through the fault of his selfish
pride, to feed his own desire to be called generous and liberal. He gave to
everybody, even to those who were not needy. Crates, who stripped himself of
all his property to imitate Diogenes, was the slave of pride: he wished to do
something different from others, to acquire the name of philosopher and learned.
The professional beggary of the Cynics is a picturesque form of pride. The
poverty of Plato's warriors is a measure of political prudence. The first
republics conquered and flourished as long as the citizens contented
themselves, as in old Sparta and old Rome, with strict poverty, and they fell
as soon as they valued gold more than sober and modest living. But men of olden
days did not despise wealth in itself. They held it dangerous when it
accumulated in the hands of the few, they considered it unjust when it was not
spent with judicious liberality. But Plato, who desires for his citizens a
condition half-way between need and abundance, puts riches among the good
things of human life. He puts it last of all, but he does not forget it. And
Aristophanes would kneel before Pluto if the blind God should acquire his sight
again and give riches to worthy people.
In the Gospel, poverty is not a philosophical ornament nor a mystic
mode. To be poor is not enough to entitle one to citizenship in the Kingdom.
Poverty of the body is a preliminary requisite, like humility of the spirit.
He who is not convinced that his estate is low never thinks of climbing high;
no one can feel a zest for true treasures if he is not freed from all material
property,—from that winding-sheet which blinds the eyes and binds down the
wings.
When he does not suffer from his poverty, when he glories in his
poverty instead of tormenting himself to convert it into wealth, the poor man
is certainly much nearer to moral perfection than the rich man. But the rich
man who has desecrated himself in favor of the poor and has chosen to live side
by side with his new brothers is still nearer perfection than the man who was
born and reared in poverty. That be has been touched by a grace so rare and extraordinary
gives him the right to hope for the greatest blessedness. To renounce what you
have never had may be meritorious, because imagination magnifies absent
things; but it is the sign of supreme perfectibility to renounce everything
that you actually did possess, possessions that were envied by everyone.
The poor man who is sober, innocent, simple and contented because he
lacks means and occasions for anything else, is inclined to look for compensation
in pleasures which do not cost money, and as it were for a revenge in a
spiritual superiority where prosperous people cannot compete with him. But
often his virtues come from his incapability or from his ignorance; he does not
turn from the right course—he cannot afford to do so—he does not pile up
treasure because he possesses only the strictly necessary; he is not drunken
and licentious because wine sellers and women of the streets give no credit.
His life, often hard, servile, dark, redeems his faults. And his suffering
forces him to lift his eyes towards Heaven in search of comfort. We do so
little for the poor that we have no right to judge them. As they are, abandoned
by their brothers, kept far from those who could speak to their hearts, avoided
by those who shrink from the proximity of their sweaty bodies, excluded from
those worlds of intelligence and the arts which might make their poverty more
endurable, the poor are, in the universal wretchedness of mankind, the least
impure. If they were more loved, they would be better men. How can those who
have left them alone in their poverty have the heart to condemn them?
Jesus loved the poor; He loved them for the compassion which He felt
for them; He loved them because He felt them nearer to His soul, more prepared
to understand Him than other men. He loved them because they constantly gave
Him the happiness of service, of giving bread to the hungry, strength to the
weak, hope to the unhappy. Jesus loved the poor because He saw that if they
were justly treated they would be the most legitimate inhabitants of the
Kingdom. He loved the poor because they rendered the renunciation of the rich
easier by the stimulus of charity; but most of all He loved the poor men who
had been rich and who for the love of the Kingdom had become poor. Their
renunciation was the greatest act of faith in His promise. They had given that
which considered absolutely is nothing, but in the eyes of the world is
everything, for the certainty of sharing in a more perfect life. They had been
obliged to conquer in themselves one of the most profoundly rooted instincts of
man. Jesus, born a poor man among the poor, for the poor, never left his
brothers. He gave to them the fruit producing abundance of His divine property.
But in His heart He sought the poor man who had not always been poor, the rich
man ready to strip himself for His love. He sought him, perhaps He never found
him. But He felt this longed-for, unknown brother man tenderly nearer to his
heart than all the docile seekers who crowded about Him.
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