“one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” – Jesus (Lk. 12:15)
This post was inspired by a story I read from the Onion today that was incredibly accurate in its satire.
Every time I meet someone I know in the streets or see a person at a party, the question that almost immediately arises is “where are you working?” For Anglo-Americans work is a vocation of sacerdotal importance second to nothing. Work is the means of grace and the hope of glory. If you’re in school, your program is deemed only as useful as the money it can produce for you. In one film “Elizabethtown”, Orlando Bloom’s character, a failed shoe designer declares that from his horrific failure, he learned that “success, not greatness, was the only god the entire world served”.
In the 13th century there was a group variously labelled: the Spiritual Franciscans, the Zelanti, or the Fraticelli. They consisted of monks (and I presume nuns) as well as lay-supporters who believed that extreme poverty was necessary to perfectly imitate Christ, and that what some clergy were living on and naming “poverty” was actually incredible indulgence. These folks devoted their entire existence to the poor and to the precepts of the Gospels, which naturally drew the ire of Rome. When they decided that the Pope was wrong about them, they moved to Armenia to be under a new bishop, and eventually to Greece (though the Papacy succeeded in catching and imprisoning them eventually).
I tried to think of what would have motivated people to hate the Spiritual Franciscans so much. Was poverty so wrong? Well imagine if in our day and age, university educated elites, suddenly started striving for poverty. To descend as George Orwell did, in ‘Down and Out on the Streets of Paris and London’, and reject all of the power and success that one’s position brought them. A complete rejection of worldly satisfaction for a simpler way. A breaking of the idol of success for a life of failure. I can see some angry parents gathering, as well as spectators. Surely they don’t mean to change my life? do they?! Are they implying I don’t deserve my hard-earned comforts?!
As you could imagine, middle-class logic and the Spiritual Franciscans never went well together. And so, they had to die.