“… a person of double heart cannot wage war for the Lord, for ‘a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.“(XV.2)
Our third conflict is with avarice, which we can call the love of money. It attacks are from without and is not natural, and it does not have its source in the monk {believer} other than in the weakness of a corrupt and sluggish mind, often with the beginnings of renunciation poorly grasped and a lukewarm love of God laid as a foundation. The other incitements to vice seem to be part of human nature and to have their sources as it were inborn in us. They are, so to speak, deeply rooted in the flesh, are present almost at the moment of a person’s birth, and precede the ability to distinguish between good and evil. Although they are the first to seize upon a person, they are conquered only after long effort. (I)
And so this debilitating disease, which is condemned by all the fathers with equal detestation, has three aspects. One,…, is that which deceives wretches and induces them to store up things that in fact they had never possessed when they were living in the world. Another is that which urges people to take up again and to desire once more things that they had given up at the start of their renunciation. A third is that which is contracted as the result of a bad and vicious beginning and which starts off people in imperfection; those whose minds it has once infected with lukewarmness and who are terrified by their fear of poverty and by their lack of faith it does not permit to despoil of all their worldly goods, and those who keep back money and belongings that they ought to have given up when they made their renunciation it does not allow ever to arrive at gospel perfection. We find that there are examples of these three downfalls in Holy Scripture and that they were condemned to no insignificant punishment. (XIV.1)
For it is not so much the result of avarice that must be avoided as it is the disposition toward it that must be uprooted, since it is profitless not to have money if the desire to possess it exists in us. (XXI)
For the madness of covetousness is that it is always wants more than whatever a person can accumulate. (XXIV)
(St.) John CassianXV.2
The struggle for poverty (by Thomas Merton, OCSO. Cassian and the Fathers, pp 172-173)
- The monk must not possess the smallest piece of money. (Note that Cassian is speaking here always against money first of all-against possessions that can be made “liquid” rather than goods that can be consumed.) (Money is the blood of that mystical person, the world.)
- The monk must also get rid of all interior desire to have any money.
- In order to overcome the spirit of avarice and desire of money, the monk renounces all possessions and embraces “nudity.” This is interesting, a point we overlook in our day. The end-purity of heart which has no stain of desire for money, which is essential to the worldly spirit. The means-renouncing all possessions and being content with nothing,or with the poorest of all things given for our use. But this is not poverty in itself.
- Faith and resolute determination to go forward trusting in God to take care of us: refusal to look back, or to allow fear for our future to weaken our spirit of trust. These are essential to the perfect spirit and practice of poverty-they are at once the best means and the fruit of poverty.
- Fear the punishment given to prevaricator s-Ananias and Sapphira, Judas.
- Practice perfect patience, based on humility. Without this patience, poverty is insupportable . Note again the radical importance of humility. Everything depends on it (c. 31).
- The norm of monastic poverty: to be content with enough food to live on and enough clothing to cover our nakedness (cf. II Tim. 6).
