Voluntary Poverty

Peter Maurin co-founded the Catholic Worker movement (CWM). Through his knowledge of the Word, interest in the lives of Christians throughout the ages, commitment to be conformed to the life of Christ, and desire to serve the poor in Christ’s name, he knew that a commitment to voluntary poverty is foundational to one’s own faith, as well as a witness to how others will come to understand the Gospel. Peter knew what St. Francis knew: detachment from material things allows us to see ourselves, others, and the world as God sees, and it frees us to fully lay aside our selves and to unconditionally follow God in the service of the poor.

Through Peter’s guidance the other co-founder of the CWM, Dorothy Day discovered that by becoming poor God provides a richer and more joyful life which is far more rewarding than anything that we can produce through our own resources.

For the seven years before I met him, [Peter] had worked as a caretaker in New York State at a boys’ camp during the winter. As far as I could gather, he live with the horse in the barn. He mended roads, broke rock and cut ice. He was vehemently opposed to the wage system, so received in return for his labour, which he pointed our was voluntarily given, the return gift of enough food and clothing from the village store to supply his needs, a place to sleep and the use of the priest’s library, without which he never would have stayed upstate so long. He never refused to give alms, no matter how poor he was. He believed in poverty and loved it and felt it a liberating force. He differentiated between poverty and destitution. The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day

The model in the Christian life of voluntary poverty is Jesus himself. Christ was born in a stable, spent the first years of his life as a refugee in exile, worked with his hands in a carpenter shop, walked from place to place, called his disciples from the ranks of the working class, repeatedly taught time and again on serving God from the standpoint of voluntarily giving up earthly attachment, and in the end refused temporal kingship. He lived in an occupied country, never started an underground movement, was neither a terrorist nor an activist, directed his words to the poorest of the poor, and died between two thieves. This was the model upon which was built the community of the first Christians. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they shared with anyone who was in need. Acts 2:44-45

As Christ’s disciples there is nothing that Jesus taught about discipleship in to which each one of us is not called. Both Peter and Dorothy knew that each follower needs to respond to the Beatitudes with our whole lives: Blessed are the poor. Luke 6:20 To be poor means to have no choice about the direction and conditions in one’s life. It is disingenuous to serve the poor without relinquishing your access to choices as well, which once again is precisely what Christ did on our behalf, who though he was God...did not count equality with God but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. Philippians 2:6-7

It is very difficult for Christians in the West today to accept this, in spite of how overwhelmingly prevalent and straightforward this message is in scripture. The West idolizes economic success as taught by our culture; it could care less about spiritual success. The West views life through the glasses of capitalism, which is the spirituality of the West’s upper-middle and upper classes. It inculcates its children to get an education, pay off their loans, and go on to make a good living above everything else. We ourselves have an extensive education, but in stipended and free programs. We worked to serve the poor both during our studies and as we repaid our loans, and then we immediately returned to serving the poor in solidarity with them.

Voluntary poverty is freeing; it teaches a whole new way to live, which is God's way. It allows people to overcome the slavery of consumerism and materialism, unfettered by the controls of a lifestyle that must be served instead of one that serves others. And there is no bureaucracy in this approach, no counting, no envisioning, no valuing and evaluating of statistics in order to insure the future possibility of doing the will of God, but simply serves the poor simply; wage constraints fall away. Voluntary poverty does not require endowments of grants and pays no salaries. All you have to do is start and have hope and faith in God and other like-minded people who have themselves been so freed by God.

Voluntary poverty requires people to finds ways of supporting themselves from sources other than churches or governments; voluntary poverty does not mean going on welfare or requesting a church official to underwrite your program. In many cases it has meant working as a team so that some may perform this service, while the others bring in what is needed to be able to serve. At the Parkland Worker Farm some of our support comes from what is produced on this farm, and some from that which is contributed from off-farm income; it all goes toward the common goal of serving the poor as people with a lack of options like the poor. We pay no salaries here; we accept no money for what we produce on behalf of the poor.

When it comes to Catholic Worker distinctives, our voluntary poverty is not the same as the vows of poverty that some take in various intentional Christian communities, as valid and important as those vows may be. Instead, the voluntary poverty of the Catholic Worker movement does not mean simply living simply, but living simply in order to meet the true needs of the poor so that in doing so we ourselves work out our salvation, discovering our freedom along the way.