"Seek The First the Kingdom of God…"

All through the Old Testament, "poverty", as a value that must be lived, does not mean renunciation to, or lack of, material goods, but rather an attitude of submission and surrender to God, and a search for His will during the trials of life. The teachings and the life of Jesus show to perfection what poverty is. In Jesus, the old idea that riches are a blessing from God and the lack of goods a punishment for the evils done, is surpassed. For Jesus, the important thing is the Kingdom, and everything else must relate to it. Poverty is not material "misery", but rather the overcoming of the pretext of not needing God, and the pretext of managing one's life without interference from anyone else, and of building , alone, one's own "kingdom". Before asking people to detach themselves from material things, Jesus asks them to detach themselves from themselves, from their own ways of . wishing and desiring, from their emotions. He is the one who steadfastly underlines the need for gentleness of heart, for humility, for availability and forgiveness, for submission to God, for freedom from the goods of this world. This value lies not as much in the absence of possessions, but rather in freedom from them, so that we can be interdependent and become gift to others: something attainable if we look at God as a Provident Father who takes good care of us.
The poor of the Gospel is the person who seeks God's Kingdom and its justice before everything else, the one who finds in God the true treasure of his life (See Mt 6:31-34). Poor is the one who is available to get rid of every thing in order to obtain that treasure, the one who is afraid that God and His Kingdom will no longer be found if his heart becomes full of the goods of this world.
Looked at through the eyes of the Kingdom, how do material goods appear to us? They are not objects of contempt, they should be seen as realities that must not enslave us (See Mt 5:29-30), because man is much wordier than things are (Mt 16:26). Whoever lets things seize him, loses his freedom and loses sight of the Kingdom. The Gospel man uses things that can be of use in the building of the Kingdom, but knows how to go without them in order to set his sight and his heart on realities that are truly important. There he is: a man who is free, not so much from material goods as he is free for, or at the disposal of, the Kingdom.
From the Gospel blossom forth some lines of behavior which are a must for every disciple of Jesus: The more one becomes rich in the things of the Kingdom, the more one becomes poor in the things of this world. A progressive renouncing to material goods strengthens one's being in Christ, but the possession of things of this earth develops a craving for power and diminishes the capacity of serving the others and makes one veer away from the logics of the Kingdom. In this light, the announcement by Jesus, "Blessed are the poor!" becomes easy to understand: blessed, not because they are poor, but because they did not allow themselves to be caught by things, but became full of the fullness of God. Because they did not entrust their own fulfillment to material things and did not give to things their own fulfillment, they became people of the future!

An Inheritance We Must Not Forfeit

We are sons of a man of God, Joseph Allamano. His life tells us where the true treasure is, the real treasure. Meaning, he led to maturity for us the behavior of the wise administrator of the Gospel. Matured, himself, in the school of holiness of the Cottolengo, he developed an unlimited confidence in the Providence of God. He would throw his whole being into developing daring projects because he always found out first what God's will was. Meaning, he was sure that God would not abandon him (See Conf II, 308). His suggestion to his missionaries was: "As you begin any new enterprise, you should not consider its magnitude, nor the difficulties in translating it into reality, nor should you consider the amount of work needed to concretize it: you must simply find out whether it is God's will. Then dive into it, it will succeed." Such trust in the Lord gave him an adventurous sense of enterprise, gave him courage because he felt that he was an instrument in the hands of a Father who never abandons his children. At the same time, all through his life he used discretion towards the benefactors, even when the expenses of the running of the Institute became huge. He urged his missionaries never to bug benefactors by proclaiming to the four winds the needs of the mission, and to avoid being fanatic fund-raisers. He once quipped when some untimely initiatives were begun: "No! No! I don't like it. I don't like merchant priests. There are enough of those in the diocese. I don't want you, my sons, to act the same way." (Ib. 28).
He was always aware that the money he used was not his own: He always considered himself its administrator, not its owner. And he urged his missionaries to do the same. One day he told Fr. Ciravegna: "Get used to carry some money in your pocket, and learn how to always think that it is not yours, but that it belongs to the Benefactors of the missions. This way, you will think twice when you feel like spending it." (Ib. 35). He will often tell and retell these ideas, almost as a catchword, underlining an important principle to teach a correct use of material goods: "Donations do not come to us for our own comfort, so that we may live better, but that the others may feel better. When we have what we need, that's enough… Don't say: 'Well, we've got the money…' You must have money in order to do good, not to live well. As the Lord sends them to us, let's do good works!" (Ib. 38).
Transparency and prudence in the realm of administration were scrupulously practiced by Joseph Allamano, and he demanded the same from his missionaries. In his book, Fr. G. Pasqualetti narrates several experiences of missionaries in this area (Ib. 41-44). They were all deeply impressed by his scrupulous precision in the registration and administration of donations to the Institute. Some of them say: "In the administration, he was most precise; he would enter every donation with utmost accuracy… and he would do it immediately, while the person who brought the money in, or took it out, was still there in his presence" (Ib. 42).
Here is a witnessing by Fr. Sales on the Founder's ideas concerning just salaries and respect for civil laws: "He was always extremely scrupulous in questions related to justice. He couldn't cheat his neighbor out of one penny. He declared that he was ready to be cheated a little bit, rather than run the risk of cheating others. His and anyone's spiritual and moral goods were always more important to him than material goods" (Ib. 44).
The sharing of goods was another preoccupation of the Founder. "If we do not economize," he would tell the professed students, "what are we going to send to Africa? We should only use the strictly necessary, we cannot keep everything for ourselves" (Conf. II, 252) ). It was because of the demands of sharing that he was convinced that missionaries can never be rich (Conferences to the Sisters II, 6).

Paying Attention to the Calls of the Poor

The masses of the poor in Third World countries too question us on how we use material goods in the contexts of our missionary work. Even our Constitutions decided to attach the demands of the vow of poverty to the calls from the poor: "Let the missionary grow in an authentic love for evangelical poverty through a constant conversion of heart and attitudes, so that he will 'possess the spirit of poverty' down to its roots" (SL, 242). This way, he will witness to his trust in the Providence of our Heavenly Father (See Mt 6:25-34), he will show that he is interdependent with the poor and that he possesses the freedom to raise his voice in their defense. In unison with the community, he is encouraged to live even more austere forms of poverty, in accordance with the demands of the milieu where he lives" (Const. 44).
Two paths has the post-conciliar Church delineated and trod, although not always in too easy a way: To become credible and understandable on the inside, through the removal of all useless superstructures and the elimination of connivance with "power"; and engaging itself in transforming the institutions and all unjust and alienating structures. All this comes under the name preferential option for he poor (See Evangelization and Human Promotion, 13; Vita Consecrata, 82, 90).
When a Christian community gives back the primacy to the Kingdom of God, it feels driven to "Evangelize the poor" (See Luke 4:16-21), it shares with them its life and everything else. Such a choice is not contingent, rather, it reflects one of its constitutional exigencies; and it has its roots in the Gospel itself. It is not sectarian, because meeting Christ brings the Christian close to the poor and to all those who need salvation. To choose the poor, means to share their lot, to identify with their struggles, to raise the voice to defend them, to pay in person for the choice of camp.
As missionaries and consecrated people, the service to the poor and the sharing of their lot must become part of our nature, so as to become the cartina di tornasole of our choice of Christ and his Kingdom: "The choice for the poor is inherent to the dynamics of love lived according to Christ. Consequently, all disciples of Christ are bound to it. However, those who want to follow Christ more closely, those who want to imitate His attitudes, cannot but feel involved in a special way in this cause. The sincerity of their answer to the love of Christ guides them to live as poor persons and to embrace the cause of the poor" (VC 82). The same ideas are stressed by Redemptoris Missio: "The first addressees of the mission are the poor, and their evangelization is a par excellence sign and proof of the mission of Christ (60).