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The uniqueness of religious life is
making of three vows namely purity, obidience and poverty. These three vows are
closely related to one another. If one is neglected then the others are
affected. In this reflection, I try to express the experience of the vow of
poverty against the personal experience of P. Francisco Jose Baeza Roca, CMF in
the zoom meeting last week.
The experience of living a vow of poverty then led P. Xiku, CMF
to become the trust of the community to carry out his duties as an economist.
Living frugally is one of the practices of religious poverty. Not keeping
community items in the room is a characteristic we live the vows of poverty.
Many
people think that of the three monastic vows that are easiest to live for is
the vows of poverty. But for me, I place the three of them in the same portion
that the three vows influence each other and are in an equal position. If we
fail to live up to the vows of poverty, then we will also destroy the vows of
obedience and vows of chastity.
When
people are not honest in managing finances, they will automatically fall into
failure to live up to other vows. With a lot of money people are free to do
anything. With a lot of money people are free to spend anything for personal
satisfaction. This is very contrary to the practice of religious life.
So far, I
have tried to put the vows of poverty as a way for me to live obediently and
purely because when people live in simplicity they will become persons who are
truly free and can live in freedom to follow God. Simplicity is one of the ways
to reach heaven because it is better for a camel to enter through a pinhole
than for a rich person to enter heaven (Mat 19:24)
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