“He said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?* If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;* yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you–you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his* kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.” (Luke 12:22-31)
How long are you slaves of money? How long have you no love for liberty…Yet being captives of covetousness, you do not so much as consider how you may be delivered from this bitter bondage….It is not poverty that is the thing to be feared, but not being willing to be poor. Account poverty to be nothing to fear, and it will not be a matter for fear to you. This fear is not in the nature of the thing, but in the judgment of feeble minded men…
And if any one were to offer you sovereignty and political power and wealth and luxury, and then having set poverty against them, he were to give you your choice to take which you would, you would straightaway seize upon poverty-if indeed you knew the beauty of it…But the poor man, you will say, is insulted by the one who is rich. Again you are declaring to me the praise of poverty. For who, I pray you is blessed: the insulter, or the insulted? It is manifest that it is the insulted person. But then covetousness urges insult to the other; poverty persuades to endurance.
But the poor man suffers hunger, you will say. Paul also suffered hunger, and was in famine. But he has not rest. Neither ‘had the Son of Man where to lay his head’ (Mt. 8:20). Do you see how…. it makes you a follower of the Lord? If it were good to have gold, Christ, who gave the unutterable blessings, would have given this to His disciples. But so far from giving it them, He forbad them to have it. …..But so you find it imposssible to cast them away? In the first place, I say, it is possible; but I do not compel you, if you are not willing, nor constrain you to it; but this I entreat: to keep yourself nothing more than is necessary. For so we shall both live here without trouble and in security and enjoy eternal life.”
