Last month, the BBC News Magazine ran an article about the president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, whom the headline called “The world’s ‘poorest’ president.” Mujica lives not in the luxurious house provided by the state but in his wife’s farmhouse. He and his wife grow flowers on the land. They drive a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle. He gives about 90 percent of his monthly salary to charity.

Why?

“I don’t feel poor,” he says. “This is a free choice. If you don’t have many possessions, then you don’t need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them.”

One of Jacques Berthier’s most haunting songs for the Taizé community springs to mind:

O poverty,
source of riches:
Jesus, Son of God,
born in Bethlehem.*

As we celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace, who was born in a stable and laid in a manger, let us remember those who are homeless, those who are hungry, those who are desperate. As Isaiah said, “They shall be called the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, and you shall be called ‘Frequented,’ a city that is not forsaken.”

May the peace of God-with-us remain in our hearts.

M.D. Ridge

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*© 1982, 1983 and 1984, Les Presses de Taizé.
Published by GIA Pubications, Inc.