The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William Jamesthen there is proof that you have not attained the perfection of povertyof spirit.” Rodriguez then goes on to describe the practice ofpoverty in more detail. “The first point is that which Saint Ignatiusproposes in his constitutions, when he says, ‘Let no one use anythingas if it were his private possession.’ ‘A religious person,’ he says, ‘oughtin respect to all the things that he uses, to be like a statue which onemay drape with clothing, but which feels no grief and makes no resistancewhen one strips it again. It is in this way that you should feeltowards your clothes, your books, your cell, and everything else thatyou make use of; if ordered to quit them, or to exchange them forothers, have no more sorrow than if you were a statue being uncovered.In this way you will avoid using them as if they were your privatepossession. But if, when you give up your cell, or yield possessionof this or that object or exchange it for another, you feel repugnanceand are not like a statue, that shows that you view these things as ifthey were your private property.’“And this is why our holy founder wished the superiors to testtheir monks somewhat as God tested Abraham, and to put theirpoverty and their obedience to trial, that by this means they maybecome acquainted with the degree of their virtue, and gain a chanceto make ever farther progress in perfection, … making the one moveout of his room when he finds it comfortable and is attached to it;taking away from another a book of which he is fond; or obliging athird to exchange his garment for a worse one. Otherwise we shouldend by acquiring a species of property in all these several objects,and little by little the wall of poverty that surrounds us and constitutesour principal defense would be thrown down. The ancientfathers of the desert used often thus to treat their companions… .Saint Dositheus, being sick-nurse, desired a certain knife, and askedSaint Dorotheus for it, not for his private use, but for employmentin the infirmary of which he had charge. Whereupon SaintDorotheus answered him: ‘Ha! Dositheus, so that knife pleases youso much! Will you be the slave of a knife or the slave of Jesus Christ!Do you not blush with shame at wishing that a knife should be yourmaster? I will not let you touch it.’ Which reproach and refusal hadsuch an effect upon the holy disciple that since that time he nevertouched the knife again.’ …285