No.714: Simple December Days

Then there is the overflow of his poverty.  Again we ask, “How little can he have?”  Even a poor baby does have some kind of a crib, is in some kind of a home.  But he?  How poor can he be?  How little can he have?  How much can he do without?…And how acquisitive we can be!  Perhaps not of things, although we are certainly not immune from that, but how acquisitive can we be of the way things must be arranged, the time that decisions must be made, the way this must be done.  And our Lord is saying to us in his overflow, “How little can you have?  How much can you do without?”  On the spiritual level, the level on my interior acquisitiveness, my interior concupiscence, how much can I do without?  It is when we reduce our holdings to their absolute minimum, to relate to his overflow, that we are the happiest.  When I have to have my way, and I have to have this done right now, and this has got to be figured out right now, and this has got to be arranged – this is not when we are happy.  We know that, yet we forget it very easily…How little could he have?  Just some straw, a little swaddling, a Mother, and the angels singing. – Come Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Art of Waiting, p.94-95