_Godliness with contentment_, says Holy Scripture, _is great gain_.[1]
So content was the godliness of Blessed Francis that, although deprived of
the greater part of his episcopal revenues, he was fully satisfied with the
little that was left to him.
After all, he would say, are not twelve hundred crowns a handsome income
for a Bishop? The Apostles, who were far better Bishops than we are, had
nothing like that sum. It is not for us to fix our own pay for serving God.
His love of poverty was truly striking. At Annecy he lodged in a hired
house, which was both handsome and roomy, and in which the apartments
assigned to him as Bishop were very elegantly furnished. He, however, took
up his abode in an uncomfortable little room, where there was hardly any
light at all, so that he could truly say with Job: _I have made my bed in
darkness_;[2] or with David: _Night shall be my light in my pleasures_;[3]
or again, _I am like a night raven in the house, or as a sparrow all alone
on the housetop_.[4]
He called this little room, or, to speak more truly, this sepulchre of a
living man, Francis' chamber, while to that in which he received visitors,
or gave audience, he gave the name of the Bishop's chamber.
Truly, the lover of holy poverty can always find a means of practising it,
even in the midst of riches.
Blessed Francis, indeed, always welcomed poverty with a smiling
countenance, though naturally it be apt to cast a gloom and melancholy upon
the faces both of those who endure it and of those who only dread it.
Involuntary poverty is surly and discontented, for it is forced and
against the will. Voluntary poverty, on the contrary, is joyous, free, and
light-hearted. To show you how cheerfully and pleasantly he talked on this
subject, I will give you one or two of his remarks.
Once, showing me a coat which had been patched up for him, and which he
wore under his cassock, he said: "My people really work little miracles;
for out of an old garment they have made me this perfectly new coat. Am I
not well-dressed?"
Again, when his steward was complaining of down-right distress, and of
there being no money left, he said: "What are you troubling yourself about?
We are now more like our Master, Who had not even where to lay His head,
though as yet we are not reduced to such extremity as that." "But what are
we to do?" persisted the steward. "My son," the Bishop answered, "we must
live as we can, on whatever goods we have, that is all." "Truly," replied
the other, "it is all very well to talk of living on our goods when there
are none left to live upon!" "You do not understand me," returned the
Bishop; "we must sell or pledge some of our furniture in order to live.
Will not that, my good M.R.,[5] be living on our goods?"
It was in this fashion that the Saint was accustomed to meet cheerfully
money troubles, so unbearable to weaker characters.
On one occasion I expressed my admiration at his being able to make so good
a show on his small means. "It is God," he said, "Who multiplies the five
loaves." On my pressing him to tell me how it was done, "Why, it would not
be a miracle," he answered, with a smile, "if we knew that. Are we not most
fortunate to live on only by help of miracles? _It is the mercy of God that
we are not consumed_." "You go quite beyond me," I said, "by taking that
ground. I am not so transcendently wise."
"Listen," he replied. "Riches are truly thorns, as the Gospel teaches us.
They prick us with a thousand troubles in acquiring them, with more cares
in preserving them, and with yet more anxieties in spending them; and, most
of all, with vexations in losing them.
"After all, we are only managers and stewards, especially if it is a
question of the riches of the Church, which are the true patrimony of
the poor. The important matter is to find faithful dispensers. Having
sufficient to feed and clothe ourselves suitably, what more do we want?
Assuredly, _that which is over and above these is of evil_.[6]
"Shall I tell you what my own feeling is? Well and good, but I must do so
in your ear. I know very well how to spend what I have; but if I had more
I should be in difficulty as to what to do with it. Am I not happy to live
like a child without care? _Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof_.
The more any one has to manage the longer the account he has to render. We
must make use of this world as though we were making no use of it at all.
We must possess riches as though we had them not, and deal with the things
of earth like the dogs on the banks of the Nile, who, for fear of the
crocodiles, lap up the water of the river as they run along its banks. If,
as the wise man tells us, _he that addeth knowledge addeth also labour_;
much more is this the case with the man who heaps up riches. He is like
the giants in the fable who piled up mountains, and then buried themselves
under them. Remember the miserable man who, as the Gospel tells us, thought
that he had many years before him in which to live at his ease, but to whom
the heavenly voice said: _Thou fool, this night do they require thy soul of
thee; and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided_? In truth
happy is he only who lays up imperishable treasures in Heaven."
He would never allow himself to be called _poor_; saying, that any one who
had a revenue sufficient to live upon without being obliged to labour with
head or hands to support himself should be called _rich_; and such, he
said, was the case with us both.
To my objection that our revenues were nevertheless so very small that we
must be really considered poor, for little, indeed, must we be working if
our labour was not worth what we got from our bishoprics, he replied: "If
you take it in this way you are not so far wrong, for who is there who
labours in a vineyard and does not live upon its produce? What shepherd
feeds his flock and does not drink its milk and clothe himself with its
wool? So, too, may he who sows spiritual seed justly reap the small harvest
which he needs for his temporal sustenance. If then he is poor who lives by
work, and who eats the fruit of his labour, we may very well be reckoned
as such; but if we regard the degree of poverty in which our Lord and
His Apostles lived, we must perforce consider ourselves rich. After all,
possessing honestly all that is necessary for food and clothing, ought
we not to be content? Whatever is more than this is only evil, care,
superfluity, wanting which we shall have less of an account to render.
Happy is poverty, said a stoic, if it is cheerful poverty; and if it is
that, it is really not poverty at all, or only poverty of a kind that is
far preferable to the riches of the most wealthy, which are amassed with
difficulty, preserved with solicitude, and lost with regret."
Our Saint used to say that, as for the cravings of nature, he who is not
satisfied with what is really enough will never be satisfied. I wish that
I could give any just idea of his extraordinary moderation even in the use
of the necessaries of life. He told me once that when the time came for him
to lay down the burden of his episcopal duties and to retire into solitude,
there to pass the rest of his life in contemplation and study, he should
consider five hundred crowns a year great wealth; in fact, he would not
reserve more from either his patrimony or his Bishop's revenue, adding
these words of St. Paul: _Having food, and wherewith to be covered, let us_
(priests) _be content_.[7] He gave this as his reason. "The Church," he
said, "which is the kingdom of Jesus Christ, is established on foundations
directly opposed to those of the world, of which our Saviour said His
kingdom was not. Now, on what is the kingdom of this world founded? Listen
to St. John: All that is in the world is the _concupiscence of the flesh,
or of the eyes, and the pride of life_; that is to say, the pleasures
of the senses, avarice, and vanity. The Church then will be founded on
mortification of the flesh, poverty, and humility. Pleasures and honours
follow in the train of wealth; but poverty puts an axe to the roots of
pride and sensual enjoyments. Some, says David, blaming them, glory in the
multitude of their riches; and St. Paul exhorts the rich of this world not
to be high-minded.
"It is a perilous thing for humility and mortification to take up their
abode with wealth." This is why he wished for nothing but bare necessaries,
fearing that superfluity might lead him into some excess.
When I reminded him that if we had this superfluity we might give alms out
of it, as it is written, _Of what remaineth give to the poor_, he replied,
that we knew well enough what: we ought to do; but that we did not know
what we should do, and that it was always a species of presumption to
imagine ourselves able to handle live coals without burning ourselves,
seeing that even the Angel in the vision of the Prophet took them up with
tongs!
[Footnote 1: 1 Tim. vi. 6.]
[Footnote 2: Job. xvii. 13.]
[Footnote 3: Ps. cxxxviii. 11.]
[Footnote 4: Ps. ci. 8.]
[Footnote 5: Georges Roland.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. v. 37.]
[Footnote 7: Tim. vi. 8.]