I don’t have the money to go: this article is for you

Going to Korea costs a lot of money: flights, accommodation, registration fees, getting around. Faced with a figure like that, the easiest thing would be to say: “it’s not for me”.

Let’s look at it the other way round. The cost isn’t a wall, it’s a door. It gives us something we might never have chosen: a whole year to live poverty and austerity together. Not as a forced diet, but as training for the heart.

The pilgrimage begins today, in every small sacrifice we make with it in mind.

St Paul says it in a sentence that could be a motto for us: “You know well the generosity of Jesus Christ, our Lord: he, who is rich, became poor for your sake, to make you rich through his poverty” (2 Cor 8:9).

God did not choose a palace. He chose a manger in Bethlehem, a carpenter’s workshop in Nazareth, a life with “nowhere to lay his head” (Mt 8:20) and a bare cross. He didn’t do it because poverty is pretty, but because he wanted to make clear what truly makes us rich: love that gives itself without holding anything back.

Gospel poverty is emptying our hands so that God can fill them. Whoever is clinging on to everything can’t receive anything more.

In a parable, Jesus tells us that whoever finds a treasure hidden in a field, “in his joy at the find, goes and sells everything he has and buys that field” (Mt 13:44). Notice this: he doesn’t sell with sorrow, he sells with joy. He has seen something so great that everything else seems small to him.

That is detachment. We don’t look down on things: coffee with friends, new clothes, the subscription, the weekend treat. We simply discover that there is something worth more. And to take hold of it, we need our hands free. The little things we let go of become the great things we reach.

Austerity starts with our pockets, but it doesn’t stop there. When we live with less, something stirs inside: we stop leaning on our own securities and whims and start leaning on God.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit: the kingdom of heaven is theirs” (Mt 5:3). The poor in spirit are not those who have nothing, but those who cling to nothing. They know that they have received everything and that everything is in their Father’s hands.

And so material poverty becomes a school of surrender and trust. We’ll reach the end of the school year without being entirely sure the sums add up. There will be months when it seems impossible. And that is exactly where we’ll learn to pray as Jesus taught us: “give us, Lord, this day our daily bread”. Not tomorrow’s, not the whole year’s: today’s.

Jesus invites us to look at the birds of the air and the lilies of the field (Mt 6:26–30). Whoever trusts like that is set free from anxiety and discovers a joy that money can’t buy.

This is the idea that runs through everything: if you have no money, so much the better. You’ll discover God’s generosity. If you had money, you’d go to Korea thanks to your bank account. If you don’t, you’ll go thanks to Him.

When you’re sitting on that plane bound for Seoul, you’ll look back and see how, out of your poverty, God has drawn generosity: yours, the group’s, and that of so many people who helped you when you least expected it. You’ll feel in your own flesh that God has worked a miracle with you and that Providence really does act, not just in books.

But Providence doesn’t work alone. God provides the miracle; we provide our part. We have to really want it: to want to live poorly, to give things up, to work on the campaigns, to put whatever we can into the common fund. Whoever does everything within their power can hope for everything from God.

It might seem a contradiction: poor and, at the same time, open-handed? Well, it’s exactly the same thing seen from two sides. Whoever isn’t tied to what they have is free to give it away. And whoever gives generously discovers that “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor 9:7).

And God is never outdone in generosity. God blesses the giver generously; he is very generous with those who are generous. St Paul explains this to the Corinthians when he asks them for help with the collection: “the stingy sower reaps a stingy harvest, and the generous sower a generous one” (2 Cor 9:6). And he asks them to make their contribution a generous gift and not something given grudgingly (2 Cor 9:5), so that it can be seen that their charity is sincere (2 Cor 8:8). May our generosity not be for show, but the real thing.

The miser lives shrunken. He calculates, hoards, protects himself. His dreams are the size of his wallet. But whoever is open-handed with God and with others enlarges their heart, and a large heart can aspire to great things.

Think of the widow in the Gospel, who put two small coins into the temple treasury (Mk 12:41–44). It was almost nothing, but it was everything she had. Jesus placed her above all the rich. God isn’t impressed by the amount, but by the self-giving.

Korea is a big project, and big projects are only carried forward by big hearts. If this year we are open-handed, with our time, with our money and with our effort, we won’t just reach Seoul: we’ll come back ready to dream of even bigger projects.

Throughout the year we’ll run campaigns. They aren’t just a way of “raising cash”: they are part of the way.

Every campaign we give our time to, every Twelfth Night ring cake, every coca, every lottery ticket sold door to door, in the street, outside a parish church, is time and effort we give away. They teach us the value of money earned through work, they make us overcome embarrassment and laziness, and they unite us as a group. What takes effort is valued twice as much, and we’ll arrive in Korea knowing that behind every euro there are hours of self-giving.

The campaigns have something beautiful about them: they make everyone who buys from us a part of the pilgrimage. They travel with us to Korea. And, most importantly, they’ll pray for us. Behind every euro there will be a person, a story and many prayers that will go with us all the way to Seoul.

Lived like this, the campaigns stop being an obligation and become an offering: work done out of love, which is already a prayer.

Poverty that isn’t made concrete stays as good intentions. Some ideas for living it together:

• Review the small expenses. The fizzy drink, the snacks, the paid app, the takeaway. Added together, they come to a lot. Each of us can pick one and set that money aside for Korea.
• Create a common fund that we all keep putting into from our sacrifices, our savings and this poverty we are living. Some will be able to put in a lot and some only a little, but we all have to contribute. Like the widow in the Gospel, what counts isn’t how much, but that it’s real.
• Take care of what we have. We could make a specific effort: not to spend on clothes or buy new things, but to look after what we already have and make the most of it. Mend before buying, don’t throw food away. That’s also a way of helping to get to Korea. Living even without what we really need.
• Be generous with our time. Help at home and in the parish.
• Offer it up. Every sacrifice, joined to prayer, becomes a gift to God and a preparation of the heart.
• Do it with joy. No complaining and no sour faces: gloomy austerity convinces nobody.

The Church in Korea was started, at the end of the eighteenth century, by lay people who discovered Christ with very little. St Andrew Kim Taegon and his fellow martyrs teach us that those who cling to nothing are capable of giving everything.

A poor heart is an available heart, and God uses it to do great things. We won’t give our lives as they did, but we can learn their lesson: apostolic greatness is born of detachment.

We won’t live austerity as a cost we have to pay, but as a path that is already part of the pilgrimage. When we arrive in Korea, we’ll carry far more than saved money in our suitcase: we’ll carry a heart that is freer, more trusting and bigger.

Because Jesus, though he was rich, became poor to make us rich through his poverty. And we, by making ourselves a little poorer, are preparing to be immensely rich.