“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3
Being poor in spirit means giving up control, recognizing God as sovereign and able to supply all our needs. Poverty is rooted in the fact that we do not control our own existence. So being poor in spirit means to live without possessing anything, material or spiritual. It means giving up the desire and constant seeking to possess everything. Then, everything you receive is gift and given. The one who coined the aphorism “Less is more” understood the blessing of being poor in spirit.
When you are poor, in the permanent condition of poverty, you are constantly receiving gifts, not only day by day, but moment by moment. If you were child-like, which is what Christ calls us to be, every day would be like your birthday; the gifts never stop coming. Being in this state of poverty truly is a blessing.
Accepting our poverty is also an antidote to perfectionism. When we desire perfection, it is because we want to be our own God, in control of everything, sovereign over ourselves. But being a perfectionist brings constant misery.
When we are less than perfect we feel shame, and we try to hide it. We try to preserve ourselves from shame through control. “Perfectionism is striving in our own strength to make everything right so that our shame is concealed. Perfectionism isn’t simply striving to do well. Striving to do well is good, worthwhile, and commendable. The Bible calls us to it (Colossians 3:23). Perfectionism only arises when there is shame involved.” (Tabletalk magazine, October 2018).
The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing tells us to remember our spiritual needs more than our spiritual achievements (Chapter 2, p. 6). This may be why Jesus says the poor in spirit are blessed (Matthew 5:3) – because they recognize their needs and trust God to fill them, rather than exalt in what spiritual plenty they believe they already have. No matter how great our spirit, it pales in comparison to God’s Spirit, which he wants to give us. If we are offered the gift of God’s Spirit without price, why would we seek to puff up our own spirit, other than for pride’s sake? Thus, humility must be at the core of our spiritual journey.
According to Father William Meninger in The Living Search for God, we need to remember that the Lord can supply everything we need and protect us from every evil. So humility is our way of acknowledging that we need God to fill us and He is both capable and desiring of supplying all we need.
It makes sense that this beatitude – blessed are the poor in spirit – is first: Ask these questions about the three beatitudes that follow:
– Who mourns? The one who has lost something cherished.
– Who is meek? The one who claims nothing.
– Who hungers and thirsts? Those who have nothing.
All of these blessings are for people who do not possess anything, who have either lost everything or never claimed anything.
The Austrian philosopher and poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote, “Now the days of riches are gone and no one can bring them back for us. But we can let ourselves be poor again.” (Book of Hours, poem III, 15). The first line is not a nostalgic remembrance or a lament, but a setting for a fresh and new potential. That potentiality is the paradoxical blessing we receive in becoming poor, just as Christ promised in the first beatitude.
This state of being is about letting everything go, being without, possessing nothing, and in that poverty, being content. Contentment to the point of feeling a release from all burdens and a palpable sense of joy. This is a state of consciousness. It will be exactly what we experience when we die–we will possess nothing, we will take nothing with us when our body gives up (releases) its spirit.
And Jesus tells us we can have this blessing now; we don’t have to wait until the end of our life, but we can experience it “here on earth.” Jesus taught us to pray for this, to invite God’s kingdom into our life here and now: “Your kingdom come…on earth as it is in heaven.”
Francis of Assisi said that those who fast and pray but “become immediately offended and disturbed about a single word which seems to be harmful to their bodies or about something which might be taken away from them,” such people are not poor in spirit.
According to this understanding, to be poor in spirit is to have no false self, nothing against which the self will take offense. It is to be so open and clear and transparent, that any barb or verbal aggression or hurtful thing will not find any flesh to lay into, to hurt or to harm. It is to be not strong but diaphanous. Not courageous, but fully vulnerable. Not impenetrable but fully penetrable. To be poor in spirit is to not possess anything, yet to have everything. To be poor in everything and at the same time to have everything in abundance. This seems to be a paradox…until I view it in this way:
I am not strong, but God gives me strength when I need it. I am not wise, but God gives me wisdom when I need it. I am not courageous, but God gives my courage when I need it. I am not generous, but God gives me generosity when I need it. I am not humble, but God gives me humility when I need it. I am not forgiving, but God gives me forgiveness when I need it.
All that God wants me to be, He gives to me. I am nothing without Him. Yet I am complete through Him. It is His presence in me that makes me complete, that makes me everything He wants me to be. I am truly blessed by the presence of His Spirit in me.
As Rilke wrote “We are not poor. We are just without riches, we who have no will, no world… Yet, if our Earth needed to, she could weave us together like roses and make of us a garland.” (Book of Hours, poem III, 16)