Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
In our series on Franciscan spirituality, we're talking about poverty, the most famous of Franciscan means and measures, apropos for the story in the Gospel today, as well. Franciscans see poverty as a means for escaping the bounds of place and time. It's liberty from what's contingent, and it helps us spiritually take off towards the absolute, towards the eternal.
Poverty is also a simplification of life and an indispensable condition for using the goods of the world without becoming slaves to them. Think about it. It's actually not very flattering to be called a consumer nowadays, right? People are called consumers. It sounds like something you'd want to call a farm animal, not so much a human being. It's kind of a demeaning way of referring to a person. Poverty is the antidote to consumerism. It's full of energy, it's a road to heaven, it benefits others, and it's a source of security and peace.
This poverty Francis demanded of his followers. The initiation into his order, as St. Bonaventure notes, has as its invitatory: "If you want to belong to our company, then sell all you have and give your money to the poor." For holy poverty, as Bonaventure writes, "whom alone they took with them for their charges made them swift unto all obedience, strong to labor, and speedy in journeying. And since they possessed no earthly things, they set their affections on naught and had naught that they feared to lose. They were everywhere at ease, weighed down by no fear, harassed by no care. They lived like men who were removed from vexations of the mind, and taking no thought of it for it, awaited the morrow and their night's lodging," unquote, says St. Bonaventure in the Legenda Maior.
A Franciscan soul places the care of himself totally in the hands of God, knowing that God will take care of them. They aren't anxious about tomorrow. They see the hand of the Father in everything, and they entrust themselves to Him in a spirit of abandonment and with absolute trust. Anxiety and perturbation are not their constant companions. They have a simple and marvelous security, which derives from having nothing as their own, as St. Francis prescribes for himself and his followers. They have a unique resoluteness, which surprises others around them and also draws sympathy for them in every generation.
To understand poverty correctly, we remember that the creatures of this world aren't bad in themselves, since God created them. They're intrinsically good. It's fallen man who abuses them and craves them in a greedy way, gives them his heart, attaches himself jealously to them, and even uses them for evil. Those who, like St. Francis, have eliminated the spirit of avarice to possess things can love all creatures with a free heart. They can look on them with a pure vision, with sympathy and with respect. They can use creatures without abusing them and even possess things without being possessed by the things that they have.
Riches and money have been called the devil's dung, and it certainly can lead people to hell, but it's not condemnable in itself. It's condemnable if we attach our hearts to it or put it to bad use. Even St. Francis, in his rule, tells his friars, "I admonish and exhort the friars to not despise and condemn those whom they see dressed in fine clothing and enjoying luxuries in food and drink. And every friar, rather, judge and despise himself," unquote. St. Francis condemns the root of the evil, which is the attachment to riches. It's the affectus mentis, as St. Bonaventure would say, meaning that it's the sin of the disordered love for riches.
If one can't always remove the occasion of sin by renouncing riches, evangelically there's the obligation to eliminate the cause of sin and to live in the spirit of poverty, which is required of everyone. The Franciscan spirit pushes us to an absolute poverty, but absolute first and foremost above all in the heart, which must be detached from everything. In this way, it can be accessible to everyone, even those who can't effectively be poor and renounce what they have.
However, in an authentic Franciscan, even if they live in the world and juridically possess things, they always have this nostalgia for an absolute and effective poverty. A certain anxiety to always rid oneself of what's superfluous, of what's not strictly necessary. A longing to free oneself more from the goods of this world, a progressive making oneself spiritually and materially poor. And a taste for the humble, simple little things, which is the most authentic heritage that the Seraphic Father has left to his children.
So, we'll speak more about this gift that he's given to us, St. Francis, and holy poverty. We'll speak more about it in our next reflection. 
And, we'll ask Our Lady to help us to see the beauty of poverty, which she and her Son and which St. Francis present to us all. 
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.