Happy Are You Poor The Simple Life and Spiritual Freedom
To the modern mind, the concept of poverty is often confused with destitution. But destitution emphatically is not the Gospel ideal. A love-filled sharing frugality is the message, and Happy Are You Poor explains the meaning of this beatitude lived and taught by Jesus himself. But isn’t simplicity in lifestyle meant only for nuns and priests? Are not all of us to enjoy the goodness and beauties of our magnificent creation? Are parents to be frugal with the children they love so much?
The renowned spiritual writer Dubay gives surprising replies to these questions. He explains how material things are like extensions of our persons and thus of our love. If everyone lived this love there would be no destitution.
After presenting the richness of the Gospel message, more beautiful than any other world view, he explains how Gospel frugality is lived in each state of life.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Happy Are You Poor, by Fr.Thomas DuBay
This book is not addressed to the poor. It is intended for all the rest of us who kept looking the other way when the Beatitudes were read. The book is down to earth, completely devoid of biblical and theological acrobatics.
5 Stars Radical and Challenging
Anyone who is striving to become a saint must read this book. Fr. Dubay does an excellent job of explaining why all Christians should embrace the call of poverty according to their state in life. This applies to everyone though it will of course look different if you are a nun or if you are married. This book is not for the faint of heart. It will challenge you to the core. It lays the foundation as to why we must live this out and at the same time is very practical. This book should be read with a docile heart and be reflected upon in prayer.
5 Stars If you’ve ever wondered about how wealth should look like in your Christian life…
This book really laid it down what the Gospel meant by wealth and poverty, and how it looks in life. This is the kind of exegesis I was really yearning, as I felt that everything I had heard before was fluffed up in some way, to accommodate the comfort we’re accustomed to. Dubay gives it to you straight.
3 Stars Good, but…
I didn’t finish the book because the author just kept talking around the subject, lots of ‘disclaimer’ type stuff and not enough basic how to info. i got frustrated after reading half of it and put it down. Maybe it picks up later, but I like to get to the content of the book in the first few chapters and not have to wait and wait and wait. The idea is good, the delivery needs work.
5 Stars Radical and Important Message
Although Fr. Dubay presents his central hypothesis of this book as standard Christian teaching, what he proposes is in fact an extremely radical and quite subversive teaching.
What is his hypothesis? That all Christians, without exception, are called to a life of “gospel poverty”. Can one think of anything more radical in today’s materialistic age? What does Fr. Dubay mean by “gospel poverty”? He is very careful to define the term, because he knows that it can be easily misunderstood. He spends an entire chapter explaining what it is not – for example, it is not destitution, laziness, or miserliness. Ultimately, gospel poverty is “emptiness and radical readiness”. It involves an entire attitude and way of living in which the things of this world do not encumber us, but instead we are free to serve the Lord completely. But Fr. Dubay is careful not to reduce this to meaningless platitudes – he shows that this gospel poverty must have concrete applications. He spends an entire chapter on the “levels of radicality”, explaining exactly how one can increasingly, and concretely, live a life of gospel poverty. He is also careful to emphasize how one’s state of life affects the application of this lifestyle – for example, a married father with 5 children would not live in the exact same manner as a missionary friar in the third-world. But both are called to true gospel poverty.
Needless to say, in today’s materialistic world in which Christians often live as materialistically as non-Christians, this is a truly radical message. But it is also one found in the Gospel itself, and one that we all need to be reminded of. More Christians living a life of true gospel poverty will go a long way to re-converting the post-Christian world to Christ, and therefore this book is a wonderful tool for evangelization that should be read by all those who are serious about living a completely gospel lifestyle.