I Confess, then I Receive the Gift of Poverty

On Lucio Gera’s Theology of Poverty

Abstract

An immediate and therefore ideologically-driven thesis on poverty may oversimplify the issue, reducing it to a mere negative concept, as lack of material possessions compared to wealth, thus neglecting the possibility of poverty as a radically redeemed and freed form-of-life. However, Christian faith embraces the historical event of God’s self-impoverishment or kenosis, which offers a positive perspective on poverty, as seen in the Apostle St. Paul’s teachings (2 Co 8, 9). Lucio Gera’s «The Poor’s Mystery» (1962) reflects on poverty as imitatio christi and as an existential reductio in mysterium. In poverty, humans are stripped of everything and in this way they access to the mystery and gift of finding possession of all things in God. Gera argues that if theology seeks to understand and clarify the life of the ecclesiastical community, it must fully appreciate the call to impoverishment that this community faces. The confession of faith and poverty as a vocation of the Christian community are intimately linked and require theological, metaphysical, and political analysis. The article studies the relevance of poverty in the work of Lucio Gera, with special emphasis on the first period of his writings.