If you want to be rich, you must be poor

If you want to be rich, you must be poor. Then you will be rich in everything, if you are poor in spirit. It isn’t property that makes you rich, but the spirit.

There are those who humble themselves in the midst of abundant riches, and they act rightly and prudently. For the law of nature is rich enough for everyone, and according to that law you can soon find more than enough for yourself. But for lust, abundance of riches is still poverty.

So poverty is not in nature, but in our own feelings. It’s easy for nature to find itself rich, but hard for lust. The more a man gains, the more he wants to gain, and he burns with a kind of drunkenness from his lusts.

Based on Saint Leo the Great

A monk patching robes