Podcast 3: Voluntary Poverty

Peter Land and Malcolm Schluenderfritz are joined by Jason Wilde, a lay missionary with the Catholic Family Missions Company. They discuss voluntary Gospel poverty, and in particular the role of voluntary poverty in our relationships with God and neighbor. Topics covered include: the nature of voluntary poverty; the difference between poverty and destitution; the individual, personal nature of a call to embrace a simpler lifestyle; Fr. Dubay’s Happy are You Poor; the need for individual discernment in responding to this call; the experience of the podcast participants with poverty; the many different types of poverty in the world today; Fratelli Tutti; finding pleasure in the simple things; finding happiness in Divine and human relationships; the importance of serving the poor; the importance of solidarity with the poor; Christ’s “solidarity” with humanity; the Mystical Body; the recurrent danger in the life of the Church of rejecting either the Humanity or the Divinity of Christ; the lack of security, both physical and spiritual, in today’s world; the difference between individual security and communal security from the perspective of the Gospel; and the relative affluence of most Americans when measured against other times and places. (All transcripts edited for clarity and readability.) Header image: Caravaggio, Calling of St. Matthew. Photo by Steven Zucker CC BY-NC-SA 2.0