radox at all, but perfectly reasonable,
the moment one recollects how easily higher excitements hold lower
cupidities in check. Having just quoted the Jesuit Rodriguez on the
subject of obedience, I will, to give immediately a concrete turn to
our discussion of poverty, also read you a page from his chapter on
this latter virtue. You must remember that he is writing instructions
for monks of his own order, and bases them all on the text, "Blessed
are the poor in spirit."

"If any one of you," he says, "will know whether or not he is really
poor in spirit, let him consider whether he loves the ordinary
consequences and effects of poverty, which are hunger, thirst, cold,
fatigue, and the denudation of all conveniences. See if you are glad
to wear a worn-out habit full of patches. See if you are glad when
something is lacking to your meal, when you are passed by in serving
it, when what you receive is distasteful to you, when your cell is out
of repair. If you are not glad of these things, if instead of loving
them you avoid them, then there is proof that you have not attained the
perfection of poverty of spirit." Rodriguez then goes on to describe
the practice of poverty in more detail. "The first point is that which
Saint Ignatius proposes in his constitutions, when he says, 'Let no one
use anything as if it were his private possession.' 'A religious
person,' he says, 'ought in respect to all the things that he uses, to
be like a statue which one may drape with clothing, but which feels no
grief and makes no resistance when one strips it again. It is in this
way that you should feel towards your clothes, your books, your cell,
and everything else that you make use of; if ordered to quit them, or
to exchange them for others, have no more sorrow than if you were a
statue being uncovered. In this way you will avoid using them as if
they were your private possession. But if, when you give up your cell,
or yield possession of this or that object or exchange it for another,
you feel repugnance and are not like a statue, that shows that you view
these things as if they were your private property.'

"And this is why our holy founder wished the superiors to test their
monks somewhat as God tested Abraham, and to put their poverty and
their obedience to trial, that by this means they may become acquainted
with the degree of their virtue, and gain a chance to make ever farther
progress in perfection, ... making the one mo