None of us sell that we have and give to the poor, as in Acts 2:44-45. Do you?
This is entirely incorrect, for a great many Christians do sell all that they have and give it to the poor, as much as this idea may shock you. This includes all of those men and women called to a monastic vocation, for they dispose of all their worldly goods, whether Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist or Roman Catholic, so as to benefit the poor through monastic service in imitation of the life of St. Anthony the Great, who I will discuss in greater detail later.
What is more, Friars, who exist in the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, Capuchins, Servites, Minims, Trinitarians and Mercedarians, and also some other religious orders and monasteries, include a vow of poverty, so that the monasteries or friaries they inhabit are not wasteful, but rather, the money that would be spent on a luxurious monastery (something the Cluniac monks, who were a subset of Benedictines led by the monastery in Cluny, France, were known for) could instead be given to the poor. The excesses of the Cluniacs also led to the formation of the Cistercians, who lived a simpler life for the same reason, and when some Cistercian monasteries began to show excess, the Cistersians of the Strict Observance, better known as Trappists, were formed. The Capuchins are discalced Franciscans (the Franciscans are officially called the Friars Minor, and the Capuchins the Discalced Friars Minor) who do not wear shoes, but at most wear sandals, and are even more committed to poverty than the regular Franciscans (they can be distinguished from ordinary Franciscans by their brown habits (hence Cappucino, a variety of coffee named for its resemblance to their attire) whereas Franciscans wear grey habits. It must be stressed that these habits do not belong to the Friars but rather belong to the order and are held in common, just as the Apostles after selling their worldly property made use of assets owned by the church in order to survive.
Hermits like St. Anthony the Great, St. Paul the Hermit, St. Seraphim of Sarov, and the famed Stylites, who lived atop pillars, totally exposed to the elements, a very difficult vocation, depend even more on God to survive. There is a Roman Catholic physician, Brother Dismas Mary, who became consecrated as a Penitential Hermit of St. Mary, and who following in our Lord’s instructions, sold all his posessions and set up a hermitage in the Gambia, a small country in West Africa along the river of the same name, where he provides medical care to the local population, including the Muslim clerics from the local mosque, at no charge, and also celebrates the Mass on Sundays. His hermitage is entirely dependent on donations of medical supplies and the purchase of Rustic Rosaries hand-carved by Brother Dismas Mary to sustain its operations. Then there is the Coptic Orthodox hermit Fr. Lazarus el Antony, who lives in a cave near the cave of St. Anthony in the hills above St. Anthony’s monastery. In that cave he celebrates the Divine Liturgy at midnight before returning to his own cave, or when a guest is occupying it, to a secondary, more spartan cave. He gave up all his worldly posessions when he became a Serbian Orthodox monk and thus when he asked Pope Shenouda if he could come to Egypt he has been dependent on the Coptic Church, like other monks. He is a convert to Orthodoxy, having previously been an atheist philosopher, from Australia.
So yes, there are Christians who do this, who are called to live this lifestyle. It is a difficult life but it is possible. I myself have given away money during periods of severe financial hardship, but I am not yet sure if I am called to a life of monasticism or of marriage.
Now, interestingly, the directive in question also applies to married couples in a sense, in that their children are obviously without assets, and so in marriage, the husband and wife give away their worldly goods to each other and to their children.
In Orthodoxy, there are three kinds of martyrdom: actual martyrdom, known as the Red Martyrdom, the monastic life, known as the white or green martyrdom, and Holy Matrimony, which is also understood as a kind of martyrdom where each spouse offers themselves as a living sacrifice to their husband or wife (of the opposite sex* and their children.
I suggest you read The Life of Anthony by St. Athanasius of Alexandria, who also defended the doctrine of the Incarnation against the Arian heresy at the Council of Nicaea, for which he and other Christians were later persecuted for over two decades by vindictive Arian Emperors such as Constantius, the heir of St. Constantine, who was persuaded to embrace the heresy of Arius by the sinister Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was not present at Nicaea as far as I recall (there were also a few Arian bishops who left the council before the vote was held on whether or not to uphold the anathema against Arianism and the defrocking and excommunication of Arius, the presbyter in the Church of Alexandria who was defrocked and anathematized by St. Alexander the Patriarch of Alexandria, St. Athanasius being his protodeacon, and later, when St. Alexander reposed, was his successor, although while he was in exile, a horrible Arian bishop named George was put in charge of the church of Alexandria by the Emperor (I believe it was Constantius) in violation of the ancient canons, which did not grant civil authorities such as Emperors any authority to appoint bishops. In addition to defending Christianity against Arianism, St. Athanasius also defined the 27 book New Testament canon which all Christian churches have since accepted. So he is kind of a big deal among Patristic figures.
Of all his writings however, I found The Life of Anthony to be the most gripping, as it describes in great detail St. Anthony’s failed attempts during the Diocletian persecution to become a martyr, and his renunciation of his worldly life and his migration into the desert, and the extreme lengths the devil went through to try to stop him from pursuing his vocation. It is widely known that the devil attacks monastics and especially hermits, which is why Fr. Lazarus el Antony is the only monk at St. Anthony’s allowed to live in the caves above the monastery. Indeed cenobitic monasticism was developed specifically because of the extreme danger experienced by solitary hermits. There are also a few other forms of semi-hermetic life, such as the Carthusian Order in the Roman Catholic Church, and the Idiorythmic Sketes on Mount Athos, which are somewhat similar but are less organized, and the monks of those sketes lack lay brethren to support their needs, and instead must provide for themselves in terms of food. Mount Athos also has a small number of hermits who live off the land including a few who in pursuit of giving up absolutely every kind of posession do not even wear clothes, but rather hide themselves from view in order to preserve their modesty.
*Orthodoxy views sodomy as a sin which causes great harm to those who engage in it, and thus views homosexual marriages as blasphemous.
