Here:
The Church is a great Spirit-powered machine for re-divinizing the world; this necessarily involves feeding the poor and making the world more beautiful. ... It is good that the Vatican be splendrous, but it is good that those who live and work in it live and work in spartan style (as Francis does, and as his immediate predecessors did, since the official Papal apartments were also spartan). Against those who would strip our altars and our churches in fits of utilitarian, iconoclastic madness, we must stand athwart. ... It is incumbent on all of us to practice ascesis and self-mortification; but I would add that it is particularly incumbent on those who have powerful responsibilities to be reminded of their sinful nature, and of their ontological poverty. A bishop should wear liturgical garments of unimaginable splendor–and a hair shirt underneath. His cathedral should be sublime, and his bedroom poor. ... As is always the Catholic Way, we have here a beautiful both/and: official splendor and personal austerity. This should be the way. Sell the apostolic palaces and split the money between art and service to the poor.
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There's your ontological poverty, and then there's your existential poverty, practised by none.
Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me. -- Luke 18:22
