"Behold a most important subject for examination. See whether you are perfectly free with regard to all things. Or rather, look upon Our Lord in His Sacrament, and compare your poverty with His. What does He possess? Of what does He make use exteriorly? Neither glory nor majesty nor any of the attributes of His [...]
"Behold the total gift, behold renunciation. The vow of poverty extends to our whole being. To pause on exterior things, is not to comprehend the mind. Poverty consecrates the whole religious. If we do not give ourselves entirely, we enter not into the virtue of poverty. It is easy to say: 'My God, I give [...]
"Love alone leads to perfection, but the three chief means for acquiring it are obedience, chastity, and poverty. Obedience is a consecration of the heart, chastity of the body, and poverty of all worldly goods to the Love and Service of God. These are the three members of the Spiritual Cross, and all three must [...]
"One of the deepest forms of poverty a person can experience is isolation." Source: Pope Benedict XVI, CARITAS IN VERITATE (Charity in Truth), 6/29/2009
The vow of obedience consummates the sacrifice of the religious. It is the essential vow of religion. It alone might suffice, for it eminently comprises the others. It perfects the holocaust begun by poverty in the goods of fortune, and continued by chastity in those of the body, by offering to God the liberty, the [...]