Gratuity, Unlimited Price
Poverty Breeds and Circulates Wealth
Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) cannot be reduced to one definition or to a single dimension, because the hermeneutical key that 'explains' him is his conversion to the Gospel (to Jesus Christ) – a conversion which he openly acknowledged and for which he was profoundly grateful, a conversion from the ego to the other/Other. Francis was particularly attracted to humility and poverty as the truth of Love (God), manifested by Jesus’ giving of himself to us in his Incarnation and Passion. One of the reasons for the startling fascination that Francis has held for so many from every time and place is that of his ‘becoming’ a Christian, at a time when apparently and officially everyone was, except the ‘infidels’.
Poverty is not stoic or ascetic but, as St Bonaventure says, a sign of freedom from the ' tangles' of the world (Apology Pauperum), according to the logic that "everything is superior to the part" (Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 234-237). When Francis undresses before the bishop of Assisi and his astonished fellow citizens, he realizes his dream: to get rid of goods in order to be free to love and serve everyone, following Jesus of Nazareth as the only model of life. "(Francis’) choice of poverty also gave way to a vision of the economy that remains very current. It can give hope for our tomorrow, for the benefit not only of the poorest, but also of all humanity; indeed, it is necessary for the very fate of the whole planet, our common home, "our sister Mother Earth", as Francis calls it in his Canticle of Brother Sun" (Cf. Message of Pope Francis for the Economy of Francis).
Francis of Assisi, an evangelical man, knows the ambivalence and ambiguity of the use of money: there is a strong risk of transforming money from a means of individual and collective well-being, to an ends, i.e., to an idol that closes oneself off from one’s brothers and sisters. When Francis finds himself with his fraternity, he always distinguishes between ‘misery’, an unworthy and humiliating condition, and ‘evangelical poverty’, understood as detachment from things and, thus, a precondition for freedom, charity and ‘joy’.
There were two novelties that Franciscan spirituality introduced into the socio-cultural horizon of the time: the first is that using goods is necessary, while owning is superfluous; the second is that poverty-gratuity, in order to be practiced effectively as a social virtue, must be sustainable and last over time, even by means of special financial institutions. The radical prohibition on friars from owning money, in addition to love for Jesus Christ poor and humble, stems from the economic evaluation of the so-called "relational goods": how much is the work of those who dispense the love of God worth in monetary terms? Gratuity should not be associated with no price, but rather with an infinite price.
Francis' poverty, gratitude and gratuitousness constitute real wealth, because it allows us to discover and taste the mystery of relationships that are free and for which one must be grateful.
Gratuitousness, which illuminates the transcendental reality of the human person, is the image that must inspire every human activity, if it wishes to be 'profoundly' human. The logic of gratuitousness and that of the market are not opposed in the Franciscan vision, because gratuitousness is a grace, a gift, not only for those who are the beneficiaries of gratuitous acts, but also for those who bestow them. It is this gratuitousness that a capitalist economy does not know. Nonetheless, Saint Francis reminds us that gratuity must be placed at the center of an economy for it to be authentically human and fraternal. There can be no fraternal economy without it. It is gratuitousness that truly makes us brothers and sisters and not preying opportunists. Paradoxically, it is the lack of gratuitousness (whereby genuine human relationships develop) that has led to accumulation and waste. By reflecting on gratuitousness, one is able to grasp a transition from possession to use.