examination of the heart 500 Thirdly, of your will: whether you intended to acquire and possess such things that are indicated and declared contrary to poverty by your Constitutions or by ecclesiastical law; and whether when you receive other things that you are able to and are supposed to have, you do so with the love of Christ made so poor for you, and remove from yourself all desire of possessing. 2. Consider now things which pertain to the upkeep of cleanliness in poverty, namely: whether you have kept your room, your habit, and other things very clean, mindful of the saying of that known saint: “Poverty has always suited me, but a clean one.”244 Then see, whether you wished for some exquisite food, not common for others, to be provided for you with no just cause, but only to kindle your gluttony; or perhaps you consumed ordinary food, but not agreeably and with some distaste. Finally, whether, only out of sheer curiosity, you amassed many books, even the pious ones, and crammed your room with them, as well did not always try to ascend to a more perfect and higher level of sublime poverty. [f.165r] Having made this meditation, be sorry that you persisted in some of these defects and resolve to seriously practice poverty henceforth. 3. Continue pondering the same virtue, which the numerous holy Fathers highly revered after the example of Christ, partly because the mind not snared by any earthly things more accurately contemplates, desires, and conceives celestial things; partly because those who spurn transient things stay irreproachable in each virtue and magnanimously undertake, accomplish, and complete all difficult things. 244 The source of this saying could not be determined. It is known, however, that St. Joseph Calasanz prescribed in the Constitutions of the Piarists that their garments “simultaneously shine out with poverty and cleanliness,” “so that the cleanliness will decorate the purity of the poverty of your wardrobe” (cf. ConstSP, Pars II, Ch. VI, nn. I, V). St. Stanislaus, in The Rule of Life (i.e., Norma Vitae), also prescribed for the Marians in regards to their garments that “the greatest cleanliness of them should be observed, because dirty poverty can please no one” (RL, p. 66 (Ch. IV, § 4)).
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