How to Grow in Evangelical Poverty

The First of the Beatitudes

Of all the doors to happiness Christ opened on the mountain, the first is that of poverty. Before meekness, before mercy, before purity of heart, the Gospel places the poor:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5:3^[2]

This beatitude is not one among eight: it is the key to all the others, because it names the disciple's fundamental disposition — a heart empty of self, open and begging before God. Saint Luke reports it in an even more abrupt form, without the qualifier “in spirit”:

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” — Gospel according to Saint Luke 6:20^[3]

The Catechism comments that “the Beatitudes reveal an order of happiness and grace, of beauty and peace,” and that poverty of heart is its gateway^[4]. To grow in evangelical poverty is therefore to pass through the first door of the Kingdom — the one without which no other opens.

A Condition for Entering the Kingdom

The Gospel wraps the matter in no precautions: detachment from riches is not advice for elite souls, it is a condition of entry. The Catechism states it plainly, drawing on the scene of the widow of Jerusalem who gave “all she had to live on”:

“The precept of detachment from riches is obligatory for entering the Kingdom of heaven.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2544^[5]

For possessions possess their possessor. Christ stated, without nuance, the incompatibility of two masters:

“No one can serve two masters: […] you cannot serve both God and Mammon.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:24^[6]

And he warned, before the rich young man who went away sorrowful, that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mt 19:24)^[7]. Not that wealth damns by itself — “for God all things are possible” (Mt 19:26) — but because attachment to what one owns closes the hand and the heart. Evangelical poverty is the loosening of that grip.

To Become Free

The first fruit of poverty is not privation, it is freedom. The one whose heart is not riveted to what he has can receive everything and return everything without breaking. Saint Paul described this sovereign freedom, which he had learned at the price of hunger and abundance:

“I have learned, in whatever circumstances I am, to be content. I know how to live with little, and I know how to live in abundance. […] I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” — Letter to the Philippians 4:11-13^[8]

It is the freedom of Job stripped bare: “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return” (Job 1:21)^[9]. The Catechism notes that abandonment to the providence of the Father “frees us from anxiety about tomorrow” and that “trust in God prepares us for the blessedness of the poor”^[10]. Conversely, “the love of money is the root of all evils” (1 Tim 6:10)^[11]: it chains the soul to a thousand worries. To grow in poverty is to make oneself free — not in order to have nothing, but in order to be held by nothing.

To Resemble the Poor Christ

The deepest reason is neither moral nor psychological: it is christological. The Son of God did not only praise poverty, he wedded it. From the manger to the borrowed tomb, he lived everything in destitution:

“For you know the generous gift of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” — Second Letter to the Corinthians 8:9^[12]

He himself had nowhere to lay his head: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head” (Mt 8:20)^[13]. To grow in evangelical poverty, then, is not to adopt an ascetic technique: it is to follow someone, to walk behind a poor Master, and to let oneself be conformed to him. That is why the greatest friends of poverty — Francis, Clare, Ignatius, God's beggars — never spoke of poverty in theory: they loved a poor person.

Before the means, a decisive clarification: many fail to grow in evangelical poverty because they aim at a caricature of it. Some reduce it to material lack; others make an ideology of it; still others believe they have attained it because they live simply, while their heart remains clenched. To define it exactly is already half the journey.

Actual Poverty and Poverty of Heart

Tradition carefully distinguishes two realities that everyday language confuses. Actual poverty (or material poverty) is the effective lack of possessions: it can be endured — misery, which is an evil to be fought — or chosen — the voluntary destitution of religious and saints. Poverty of heart (or poverty in spirit) is the interior disposition of detachment: not setting one's heart on what one has, whether little or much.

The Gospel asks the second of all; it proposes the first, in its chosen form, to a few. Saint Augustine said it by contrasting the man rich in desires with the poor man rich in God:

“Let humble poverty prevail over proud riches. […] The proud man seeks earthly power; the poor in spirit seeks the Kingdom of heaven.” — Saint Augustine, quoted by the Catechism, § 2547^[14]

Without poverty of heart, actual poverty saves no one: a destitute man can be gnawed by envy, a stripped religious can cling to his cell, his reputation, his own will. And with poverty of heart, the simple condition of an honest father of a family already becomes evangelical. That is why all spiritual work bears first on the heart — without dispensing with deeds, for a truly detached heart always ends by opening the hand.

“Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit”: The Meaning of the Spirit of Poverty

What exactly does “poor in spirit” mean? Not “simple-minded,” nor “without ambition,” but: poor by the spirit — that is, voluntarily, from within. The Catechism reports Saint Gregory of Nyssa's definition: poverty in spirit is voluntary humility, by which man recognizes himself as a beggar before God^[15]. The poor in spirit is the one who knows he has nothing of his own, who receives everything as a gift, and who stretches out his hand like the beggar at the door. It is the attitude of the tax collector who dares not raise his eyes (Lk 18:13)^[16], and the exact opposite of self-sufficiency.

This poverty meets humility at its root: see How to Grow in Humility. It is the inner soul of all true poverty — for one can be destitute without being “poor in spirit,” and one can be poor in spirit amid a certain ease, if one holds everything from God and for God.

A Counsel and a Precept: What Binds All, What Calls a Few

Here a classic distinction is needed, lest everything be blurred. The Gospel contains both:

• a precept valid for all the baptized: to order their affections so that attachment to riches does not turn them away from charity;
• a counsel offered to those who wish to follow Christ more closely: to renounce effectively the ownership of possessions.

The Second Vatican Council, quoted by the Catechism, formulates the universal precept:

“All the faithful of Christ must ‘direct their affections rightly, lest they be hindered in their pursuit of perfect charity by the use of worldly things and by an adherence to riches which is contrary to the spirit of evangelical poverty.’” — Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium § 42, quoted in the Catechism § 2545^[17]

The counsel, for its part, is the one Christ addressed to the rich young man:

“If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 19:21^[18]

Voluntary poverty is thus one of the three evangelical counsels — poverty, chastity, obedience — by which baptized persons consecrate themselves totally to God (CCC §§ 915-916)^[19]. But the spirit that animates them concerns everyone: no one is dispensed from poverty of heart, even if not all are called to poverty in fact.

Neither Miserabilism nor Contempt for Possessions: The Just Measure

Evangelical poverty is not the worship of misery. Endured misery is an evil: the Church fights it and calls for justice and almsgiving (CCC §§ 2443-2448)^[20]. Possessions themselves are good: they are gifts of the Creator, destined for all, and their right use is a virtue. Poverty of heart therefore does not despise possessions — it puts them back in their place: means, never ends; received, never idols.

Biblical wisdom had already asked for this just measure, equidistant from the wealth that makes one forget God and the misery that makes one blaspheme:

“Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full, and deny you […] or lest I be poor, and steal.” — Book of Proverbs 30:8-9^[21]

To grow in evangelical poverty, then, is not to aim at lack for its own sake, but to conquer the freedom of heart that allows one to use possessions without losing oneself in them — to have “as though having not” (1 Cor 7:30)^[22].

Perfection Lies Not in Poverty, but in Charity

Here is a truth fervent souls often forget, and which preserves them from a false path: Christian perfection does not consist in poverty, but in charity. Poverty is not the goal; it is a means in the service of love. Saint Thomas Aquinas established this with decisive precision: perfection consists essentially in charity, and only instrumentally in the counsels, including poverty^[23].

“Poverty is not perfection, but an instrument of perfection. […] The lesser things being more loved, the heart is drawn further away from the love of God.” — after Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 188, a. 7^[24]

This precision is liberating and demanding at once. Liberating: it forbids measuring one's holiness by the amount of what one has left behind. Demanding: it forbids contenting oneself with outward destitution if the heart does not love more. A poverty that does not serve charity serves nothing — “if I give away all I have to feed the poor […] but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor 13:3)^[25].

Why Poverty Helps: It Removes Obstacles

If poverty is not perfection, why seek it? Because it clears the ground. Riches, Saint Thomas teaches, breed three hindrances to charity: the anxiety that scatters the mind, the love that clings to what one owns, and the pride that abundance nourishes^[26]. By cutting away the superfluous, poverty cuts away these three roots at once. It does not give the love of God — only grace gives that — but it removes the stones blocking its passage. That is exactly the meaning of the counsel to the rich young man: “sell… then come, follow me” — first empty the hands, then be able to follow.

The Three Evangelical Counsels

Poverty does not walk alone. Tradition binds it to two sisters to form the three evangelical counsels, which disarm the three great concupiscences (1 Jn 2:16)^[27]:

Reading the table: these three renunciations do not oppose evil goods, but good ones — property, marriage, the will — freely handed back to God in order to love him without division. The counsels do not abolish these realities: they transfigure them into an offering. For the two other counsels, see How to Grow in Chastity and How to Grow in Obedience.

Evangelical poverty is not a state one possesses all at once: it grows, step by step, from the duty common to all up to the heroic destitution of the saints. Four stages can be distinguished — not watertight compartments, but the steps of a single path.

Ordering One's Affections: The Duty of All

The first stage is obligatory for every baptized person: not setting one's heart on money, fleeing avarice, using one's possessions with justice and generosity. This is the precept of Lumen Gentium 42^[29]. Concretely: paying one's debts, not robbing the poor of their due, sharing one's surplus, refusing to make accumulation the meaning of one's life. “Take heed, and beware of all covetousness,” says Jesus (Lk 12:15)^[30]. This stage alone, lived seriously, already transforms an existence.

Chosen Simplicity of Life

At the second stage, the soul no longer contents itself with avoiding avarice: it positively chooses to live soberly, below what it could afford, in order to be freer and able to give. This is the poverty of the fervent layperson, who simplifies his way of life, moderates his desires, guards against the superfluous, and makes saving a service rather than an idol. Saint Paul gives the rule of measure:

“If we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content.” — First Letter to Timothy 6:8^[31]

The Counsel of Poverty: Leaving Everything

At the third stage, the soul effectively renounces ownership in order to follow Christ more closely: this is the consecrated poverty of religious, who hold their possessions in common after the image of the first community of Jerusalem, where “no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common” (Acts 4:32)^[32]. This is the “sell what you possess” taken literally, as lived by Francis, Clare, Dominic, Ignatius, and so many others. Saint Francis of Assisi gave its most famous image: before the bishop of Assisi, he gave back even his clothes to his father and declared he had no father left but God:

“Until now I have called you my father on earth; henceforth I can say with full assurance: Our Father who art in heaven, since it is in him that I have placed all my treasure and all my trust.” — Saint Francis of Assisi, at his renunciation before the bishop (c. 1206), after Saint Bonaventure, Legenda Maior, II, 4^[33]

The Poverty of Spirit of the Perfect: The “Nothing”

At the summit, poverty becomes mystical: no longer only the stripping of outward possessions, but the stripping of every created support, up to detachment from one's own spiritual consolations. This is Saint John of the Cross's “nothing,” where the soul leans on nothing but naked God. This state meets the peak of detachment: see How to Grow in Detachment.

Reading the table: one never leaves the first stage — even the perfect must still order their affections — but the heart's center of gravity gradually shifts from simple honesty toward union with God alone. Each is called to the stage matching his vocation; all are called to poverty of heart.

Here is the practical heart of this article. The spiritual masters did not only praise poverty: they pointed out precise, repeatable means, within everyone's reach according to his vocation. They can be grouped into a few great worksites.

Contemplating the Poor Christ at Length

The first means, and the source of all the others: gazing upon poor Jesus until one loves him. One does not detach oneself from possessions by willpower, but by love of a greater good. Meditating on the manger where the Word lies in a feeding trough, the thirty hidden years of the craftsman of Nazareth, the itinerant life with neither purse nor bag, the stripping of the Cross where he is naked, and the tomb borrowed from another: this is what makes poverty desirable. Saint Ignatius, in the Spiritual Exercises, has retreatants contemplate precisely the “poverty” of Christ as a path to desiring the same condition. Poverty then ceases to be a loss and becomes a likeness.

Asking for the Grace to Love Poverty: The “Two Standards”

Since true poverty is a grace, it is asked for. Saint Ignatius of Loyola made it the summit of his famous meditation on the “Two Standards”: he shows two opposing strategies. The demon draws souls by riches, from which they pass to honors, then to pride — and from there to all vices. Christ, for his part, calls his servants to the reverse path: poverty against riches, reproach against honors, humility against pride. Ignatius then has one explicitly ask for the grace to be received “under the standard” of Christ, “in the highest spiritual poverty, and even […] in actual poverty, if His Divine Majesty should so will”^[34].

This petition goes far: in the “third manner of humility,” Ignatius even proposes willing and choosing poverty with the poor Christ, rather than riches, in order to resemble one's Lord more^[35]. One does not reach such a desire by one's own strength; one asks for it, and grace gives it little by little.

Detaching the Heart, Not Only the Hand

The classic trap is changing one's possessions without changing one's heart. One can give much and remain greedy; one can live soberly and secretly cling to one's comfort. Evangelical poverty therefore demands work on the interior attachment, where the heart's treasure lodges:

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth […]. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven […]. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:19-21^[36]

The practical question to ask oneself is therefore not only “what do I own?” but “what owns me?” Is there an object, a sum, a security, a project, whose loss would throw me into turmoil? There lies the tie to be untied. This interior combat is the proper object of detachment, of which poverty of heart is the visible fruit.

Practicing a Real and Chosen Sobriety

The heart, however, does not detach itself by pure intention: it needs deeds. A poverty that remained “spiritual” without ever touching one's way of life would be suspect. The saints always translated poverty of heart into concrete gestures: moderating one's spending, refusing the superfluous, not multiplying objects, repairing rather than replacing, voluntarily depriving oneself of small things, not yielding to every craving. “Sell your possessions, and give alms,” says Jesus; “provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail” (Lk 12:33)^[37]. These repeated acts re-educate desire and restore the heart's freedom.

Giving: Almsgiving and Sharing

The crowning gesture of evangelical poverty is the gift. Giving loosens the hand and the heart in a single movement; it is the verification that detachment is real. The evangelical model is not the rich man who gives from his surplus, but the widow who gives from her want:

“This poor widow has put in more than all of them […]. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.” — Gospel according to Saint Luke 21:3-4^[38]

The gift to the poor has its own place and its own rules: it is treated in the neighboring article How to Grow in Almsgiving. Let us retain here that there is no evangelical poverty without sharing: a truly detached heart gives, and gives all the more the less it needs to keep.

Abandoning Oneself to Providence

Evangelical poverty has a reverse side of trust: one lets go of possessions only if one believes in a Father who provides. That is why the great discourse on poverty in the Gospel opens onto a call not to be anxious:

“Therefore do not be anxious about your life […]. Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap […], and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. […] But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:25-33^[39]

The Catechism concludes likewise that abandonment to the providence of the Father “frees us from anxiety about tomorrow”^[40]. Growing in poverty and growing in trust are thus one and the same movement: one dares to make oneself poor only because one knows oneself kept.

Welcoming Unchosen Privations

Not all can leave everything behind; but on all, life imposes received poverties: an income that falls short, a project that collapses, a health, a strength, a reputation that dwindle. Accepted in faith, offered up, these privations become an evangelical poverty as real as that of the cloister. Sickness, the masters wrote, “detaches the soul from all created things and draws it to God alone.” The Christian does not seek suffering, but he knows how to turn it into riches when it comes, receiving it from the Father's hands. It is often through this narrow, unchosen door that God brings into true poverty those who would never have dared choose it.

Holding to the “Nothing”: The Poverty of the Spirit

The highest means, reserved for advanced souls but enlightening for all, is the stripping of the mind itself. Saint John of the Cross teaches that to possess God, “the All,” one must consent to lean on nothing created:

“To come to enjoy everything, desire to enjoy nothing. To come to possess everything, desire to possess nothing. […] For to come to the All, you must deny yourself completely in all.” — Saint John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book I, ch. 13^[41]

This ultimate poverty does not stop at material possessions: it detaches also from satisfactions, securities, consolations, even spiritual tastes, to hold to naked God alone. It is the peak of the first Beatitude — the heart entirely empty, therefore entirely available to be filled. Saint Teresa of Ávila had summed up the whole secret of this poverty in a few words, found on a bookmark in her breviary:

“Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you; all things pass away, God never changes. Patience obtains all things; whoever has God lacks nothing: God alone suffices.” — Saint Teresa of Ávila, “Nada te turbe”^[42]

The road of poverty is lined with counterfeits that imitate its exterior without having its soul. Naming them is guarding against them. (For fuller treatment, see Common Misconceptions About Evangelical Poverty.)

The Pride of Poverty

The subtlest trap: making oneself poor, then glorying in it. One has left money behind, but kept — or even nourished — self-love. Poverty then becomes a title, a gaze cast upon others, a superiority. This is precisely the reversal Saint Ignatius denounced: from poorly embraced destitution, pride can be reborn. Poverty unaccompanied by humility is only self-love in disguise.

Disguised Avarice

The symmetrical inverse: keeping little, but clinging to it fiercely. One can idolize three objects as much as a fortune. The monk attached to his cell, the poor man who envies the rich, the sober man who anxiously counts: all are rich in heart beneath a stripped appearance. The measure of poverty is never the quantity possessed, but the grip the heart exercises on what it has.

Miserabilism and Ideological Reduction

Another counterfeit: confusing evangelical poverty with an ideology — reducing the Gospel to a social struggle, making material poverty an absolute and wealth a sin in itself. The Gospel fights unjust misery and calls for sharing, but it does not canonize lack: it calls for detachment of the heart, rich or poor. Making economic condition alone the criterion of salvation betrays the first Beatitude, which reads “poor in heart.”

False-Spiritual Contempt for Possessions

A last counterfeit: despising possessions as though they were evil. This dualism is not Christian. Possessions are gifts of the Creator, “and God saw that it was good” (Gen 1:31)^[43]; evangelical poverty does not hate them, it orders them to their end. The poor saint is full of gratitude for the bread he receives; he does not insult creation, he uses it as a gift entrusted to him.

To whoever cultivates it, evangelical poverty returns a hundredfold what it seemed to take away. Christ promised it: “There is no one who has left, for my sake and for the gospel's, house or brothers or sisters […] or lands, who will not receive a hundredfold” (Mk 10:29-30)^[44].

Freedom and Lightness of Heart

The first fruit is an interior freedom that nothing can buy or take back. The poor heart is no longer tossed about by fear of losing or by craving to acquire; it walks lightly. It possesses “as though having not,” and this lightness is already a foretaste of Heaven, where one will hold nothing but God.

Trust and Peace

The second fruit is the peace of children who do not worry about tomorrow. The poor man according to the Gospel has handed his future over to a Father; he knows the trust in God of which the Catechism speaks — the trust that “prepares us for the blessedness of the poor”^[45]. Where the miser watches and calculates, he sleeps in peace. This peace is inseparable from trust and from the surrender of oneself into God's hands.

Availability for God and Neighbor

The third fruit is availability. Empty hands can carry everything; the free heart can love everything. The poor man according to the Gospel is ready to leave, to give, to serve, because nothing holds him back. It is poverty that makes the saints mobile for mission and close to the smallest.

Treasure in Heaven

The last fruit is no longer of this world: it is the promised treasure. All that has been left behind or given out of love is not lost, but transferred to where “neither moth nor rust consumes” (Mt 6:20)^[46]. Evangelical poverty is, at bottom, the most profitable of investments: it exchanges the perishable for the eternal. This is the logic of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price, for which the man of the Gospel “goes and sells all that he has” with joy (Mt 13:44-46)^[47] — for he knows what he is buying.

• What the Saints Say About Evangelical Poverty — the anthology of the great voices (Francis, Clare, Ignatius, Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross).
• Common Misconceptions About Evangelical Poverty — the misunderstandings to avoid: miserabilism, ideology, contempt for possessions, pride of destitution.
• How to Grow in Detachment — the interior root of which poverty of heart is the fruit.
• How to Grow in Almsgiving — the concrete gift, crowning gesture of poverty.
• How to Grow in Trust and How to Grow in Abandonment to God — the face of trust, inseparable from poverty.
• How to Grow in Humility — voluntary humility, the soul of poverty in spirit.
• How to Grow in Chastity and How to Grow in Obedience — the two other evangelical counsels.