I am reading a book that Katerina did a write up on awhile back. Happy Are You Poor by Thomas Dubay. Fabulous, fabulous book!
It focuses on Gospel Poverty and looks into it. Let’s just say that hubby and I are reading it out loud to each other at night and reviewing our life and how we live. It is a book I recommend for every single follower of Christ. This book is so thought provoking that I will be focusing on some quotes. It is perfect for Advent and to prepare for Christmas and the Second Coming.
This book is loaded with Scripture and then the Saints and what they lived and taught. So there is no wriggle room for the reader so it can be . . . quite uncomfortable. This book places us from the perspective of the rich young man who asks Jesus what he has to do to have eternal life. And Jesus replies “There is one thing further you must do. Sell all you have and give to the poor. You will have a treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me.” (Luke 18:22) And we know the story. The man cannot. And Jesus comments “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” (Luke 18: 24-25).
Happy Are You Poor explores why wealth and faith are so incompatible. And for wealthy Christians? This book really challenges what most of us work so hard for. Our cars. Our homes. Things to fill our home.
Factual poverty embraced in faith does something to a person in the deep resources of his being. It matures him, develops him, makes him receptive to what the Lord Jesus is about. It is not merely a superficial ability to parrot words about the dire straits of the third and fourth worlds, to proclaim with an abundance of rhetoric but with no follow through in life (pg56).
I was thinking about the Church’s teaching on family and marriage and I thought that if people were to be open to having whatever kids they could have, Gospel Poverty really comes. There is a family in town who I continue to think about when I read this book. This family is poor. By choice. They live very simply. They continue to have children. They are not on welfare. They have their needs met. But when I think about Gospel Poverty they live it.
Anyway, this book certainly challenges a LOT of our culture and how every single one of my Christians friends and I live.
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