Joyful Love for Poverty

Today's Memorial of St. Clare of Assisi brings the thought of poverty to mind. The poor present a challenge to us. Should we help them? How much should we help? How? They are always in need and it becomes tiresome, irksome, when they keep asking for help. No one likes to be poor, and if there's a way to get out of poverty, be it education, which will provide the tools for self-suficiency, or welfare, which will provide immediate relief, but kill the spirit. Yet, the poor, and I'm thinking of Rwanda or Pine Ridge, SD, are happy, able to laugh, joke, tease, able to get along with so little. How do they do it?
St. Francis and St. Clare provide a clue: They deliberately chose to be unemcumbered by THINGS so that they could enter cleanly into deep communion with the crucified Jesus. St. Paul puts it this way: "You know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sake he became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich." (2 Cor 8:6). And, "...I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him,..."(Phil 3:7-8). It is the freedom from non-essentials which allows Jesus to fill in the gap with his presence and love, providing a joy that money cannot buy. The motto of the Poor Clares is "God will provide", and certainly he does, and more than just material needs. It is a motto for all Christians and especially for us Marists whose preference for simplicity is a hallmark of our spirituality.
Bro. Rene