Listen to what it says in the Imitation of Christ: ‘This must be your endeavor, this your prayer, this your preference, that you should manage to be stripped of all possessiveness, and follow in the footsteps of Jesus, naked as he.” And when the Imitation of Christ talks about being stripped of possessiveness, it doesn’t just mean living simply on a small income; it means giving up all ambition, all desire for human praise, all greediness for any kind of comfort, spiritual consolations included. We ought to aim at that, it says. And if we cannot bring ourselves to aim at it, we ought to pray that it may happen to us; and if we can’t bring ourselves to utter that prayer, we ought at least to make it our preference – we should like to be people like that.

– Msgr. Ronald Knox