“Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit” (11/2/2021)

(Note: this is the second in a series of 10 articles on the Beatitudes in the Christian Life)

The Sermon on the Mount begins, appropriately and understandably, by telling us that if we seek salvation and the promise of life with our Triune LORD in the Kingdom of heaven, we must begin with acknowledgement of our dependence upon the LORD. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

This is not only the first beatitude; this is the first step of “The Way.” Realizing our full humanity and living as we were created to live starts with the realization that our very being begins with the LORD. We are only because the LORD is. And our journey of life amounts to seeking the path that takes us back home to where we began, to the source of our being, to the loving LORD.

Hopefully, all of us who are seeking to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ as his disciples of the modern times have been blessed to recognize in Jesus the face of one who was “poor in spirit,” one who acknowledged always that He was sent by the Father to do the will of the Father. We, too, have been sent by the Father, in the name of Christ, and we, too, must also always seek the will of the LORD for our journey in faith, hope, and love through prayer and discernment.

Hopefully, we on the journey have also known many contemporaries who model for us what it means to be “poor in spirit.” I know that I have been blessed by knowing such people who sincerely and prayerfully sought daily to live their lives according to the will of the LORD, people who demonstrated a profound awareness of the power and presence of the LORD moment to moment, manifestations of the LORD’s love at work in the world and their lives.

My grandmother, Lena Teller Boyle, was such a person. She prayed without ceasing. She prayed her morning prayers, her evening prayers, her daily rosary, and she prayed throughout the day. Regardless of what was happening in her life, she trusted in the LORD’s loving presence.

When St. Paul was preaching to the Athenians, he told them about the LORD, the one true God. His speech is one all of us should commit to memory for it would assist us in assuming the stance of “poor in spirit” authentically. Paul wrote: “The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything. He made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being.”

Let us seek daily to remember Paul’s words and to realize their importance in our efforts to live as Jesus taught us, “poor in spirit.”

Until tomorrow, love well.