The Beatitude of Poverty

Then fixing his eyes on his disciples he said:
“How blessed are you who are poor: the kingdom of God is yours.
Blessed are you who are hungry now: you shall have your fill.”
Luke 6:20-21


In Luke’s gospel, Jesus spoke these when he approached a level ground where many people had gathered, to hear him and to be cured. Because of its similarity to the familiar words we know as Matthew’s Beatitudes, which were taught by Jesus on a mountain when he saw the crowds (Matthew 5:1), we tend to read one text over the other.

But the subtleties in difference between the text are sufficient for us to take a look at Luke’s version of events, and see if he intends to inform his readers of something else. We know he wrote in beautiful Greek, and therefore this makes it unlikely that the variance was an accident, even if he had the same source (which in French is Quelle, a reference to the missing “Q” gospel from which all the synoptics share a commonality).

Jesus according to Luke goes on to immediately expand on this teaching with many sayings, which sets out a “rule”, if you like, for his followers to live by. These guide to behaviour is strikingly new and full of contradictions. You can imagine some laughter followed by a deep gaze, and silence as the crowd absorbs what he is saying to them: Love your enemies (v27), present your other cheek (v29), lend without any hope of return (v35), do not judge; forgive, and you will be forgiven (v37), advocating that “the standard you use will be the standard used of you” (v38).

At the core of this, he offers an unusual reward, that they will be “children of the Most High” , and therefore “be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate” (v35-36). This is different again from Matthew’s telling of the Beatitudes, which in his treatment of the sayings of Jesus for expected conduct of his followers, he sums it up as “You therefore must be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48b). It is sufficient to say that he was writing primarily to a Jewish audience first, whereas Luke was directing his gospel to a gentile and Greek-speaking diaspora, which may not have a thick layer of Jewish cultural influence over them.

In any case, to Jesus’ listeners, they must be dumbstruck with the idea of Yahweh Elohim (the Most High) as their communal father, and that they become his heirs by their conduct. But in fact, this is the heart of Mosaic Law. To enter into the Kingdom of God, promised to them by covenant Yahweh made at Mount Horeb, he instructed them in the ways they are to live.

Let’s get back to the first thing Jesus says: how blessed are you who are poor.

Here he is not referring merely to the distinction of being poor in spirit (cf. Matthew5:3). He seems to make specific sense of what the poor is. Of course, the gentile “have-nots” of the first century were a motley lot, they included bondsmen and slaves, prisoners and freemen who were far beneath the aristocratic classes, labourers and farmers, herders, etc.

What is it about being poor that makes the Kingdom of God readily available?

It is to this that we find the poverty embraced by the spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi illuminating. For his life translates precisely the condition which allows God to work more readily through us. How?

We find the answer at the very beginning of Luke’s gospel, and certainly, once it is made clear, we will have a feast of examples all through the centuries to our present condition.

At the annunciation of the birth of Jesus by the angel Gabriel to the virgin, Mary (Luke 1:26), we hear her fiat accompli, her consent to accept the angel’s message, with the words, “You see before you the Lord’s servant, let it happen to me as you have said.” It is a remarkable proclamation, full of assurance and certainty unlike the earlier moments of the same event. Why? Firstly, Mary accepts her position truly as the “slave of Yahweh”, the anawim, the “poor of Yahweh”, the lowest of the hierarchy in the House of Israel. Modern translations are uncomfortable with the word “slave” or bondsmaid, because of our 17th Century indulgences in that horrible trade, as if this terrible condition is extinguished already from our world.

St. Francis knew that the surest way to experience the reign of God in our interior life, is when we are completely resigned in our lack of ability to fulfil our desires, to have totally abandoned the concept of having “desire”, and subjecting oneself completely to life as it unfolds, being resigned to providence.

Poverty is not a theoretical concept. It is to be lived. You cannot explain its condition. Like ecstacy, unless you yield to the experience, you cannot know it. Until you are stripped of all opportunity, all hope, of all means to do anything by your own power and influence, you do not understand it the same way a newborn baby cannot know his alphabets. It is simply unrecognizable to the intellect. To St. Francis, it is the specific instruction of Jesus to “take nothing for the journey: neither staff, nor haversack, nor bread, nor money; and do not have a spare tunic.” (Luke 9:3) Jesus does not promise that they may not starve, yet be robbed or killed, or that they would have everything provided for! When they return, Jesus was filled with joy by the Holy Spirit, and he said: “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to little children.” (Luke 10:21)

This revelation is astonishing and so plain, we actually miss it.

Until we completely give up our fears, our hopes, and our personal wisdom, and experience the totality of walking out with “nothing”, we miss this surest of ways to have the Father reveal his life within our inner most being. This is the spirit of being poor, utterly submissive, so that all that we have, we no longer have. Until we are completely detached, as the mystics tell us, from the whole material framework of life we live in, we cannot fathom this truth.

It is to be as “little children”, to accept that we DO NOT KNOW, and only then, the Father fills us up with the beatitude of his life, which is peace, happiness, joy and every blessing.

All the longest time I thought I was like a spiritually young person, struggling with ideas and knowledge of the faith, and contemplating with methods devised by many teachers. And I kept asking of God to reveal to me his will, to bring me into his life, to help me become joyful according to the Gospel. Laden with all the knowledge and concepts, I found myself struggling with interior bitterness and floundering in hope, as if there is only emptiness and absence, and that these struggles are vain atttempts to prove that we do have right to a relationship with God as Father. In those desperate moments, sometimes, up a stair, or as I walk alone to towards my destination, I suddenly hear myself sigh, Abba – Father. No, it is not a proclamation of faith, it is more like a sigh of complaint, let me be clear! But the exclamations surprise me, as the thought was not in my own mind: “it just came out”.

It felt intellectually comforting, still. As if God was gently saying something I could not grasp, for St. Paul assures us, that it is the Spirit that makes us call out “Abba, Father”, in desperation or in praise.(Romans 8:15)

Here I was, literally at the nadir of life, with absolutely nothing, and everyday the reality that it does get worse by means and things, draws life-blood out and I feel life shrivelling and thinning itself out. But the flame is not easily extinguished, and therefore it is a torment long drawn of having even more taken away, as the sum of my own being is reduced to absolutely nothing. I own nothing, I have nothing, and I am worth nothing, not to myself, and definitely to anyone.

It is in this dejected state, with empty pockets and stomach that I try to make out what is happening. All I thought I had begged of God was to have him enter in my life, by all means.

I wondered why I was struggling but dared not compare my state as equal to the hardship of Job. But it somewhat feels similar, to be robbed of all your personal sense of being, and to feel completely valueless and worse, unworthy.

As the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd celebrated its 160th Anniversary on the Feast of the Annunciation, I thought why not try and spend some time with the day’s programme. But as the day dawned on me, my heart baulked at the pietous devotions of the whole day. In any case, I recalled the St. Terese of Avila admonishing her sisters as St. Pio does, that the point of prayer is not the emotion but the will that disposes one. The day goes somewhat well, but it seemed to do nothing for my spiritual state. I just resigned myself, prepared for confession and made a simple effort to keep myself from any impurity.

When it was all over, I thought that as I was in the heart of town, I could go to Sts. Peter and Paul Church nearby for the 5.30 pm sunset mass for the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Very timely and convenient. It ended up with my having to move up all the way to the first few pews, as the church was packed. I sat next to a lady from Holy Cross church. We sang and worshipped. I heared Fr. Thomas OCD’s very spirited sermon and felt inexplicably joyful.

Then at consecration, I just asked God to help me with my struggle.

It was revealed to me then, that God never desires that I should have to try by own effort, that is, working my own human nature to let him come into it. It became clear to me immediately, as a consoling voice opened itself in my heart; then at once the interior lights were made known to me about my situation.

Thus, it is through the companionship of Poverty that the heart learnts many spiritual insights which illuminates the words of the Gospel. This is plainly not apparent to those who do not worry because of their abundance. No, in fact, until we are completely robbed of everything and left to the wayside (cf. Luke 10:30) we cannot understand this mystery about God’s life within us where he longs to hold sway.

This is a great comfort, to be able to come into the light and feel its radiant warmth. To know that despite all loss, His is all to be gained. That within my human nature, I am never too overwhelmed by my sinful state and despair; that life is a great passion to lose one’s grip on things and to regain the hold, to persevere, and not yield to that ancient fear of God abandoning us. It is at that moment we realise the immense faith of Jesus, as dying in utter dejection (Matthew 27:46) he quotes Psalm 22 “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (as the Hebrew practice is to quote the first verse to mean the whole), which in fact proclaims that God’s faithfulness saves. Indeed, it is God’s faithfulness to his promises that he sent his only Son, who lived that same faithfulness in totality and surrender to the point of complete immolation on the Cross, and in that way, we are all redeemed from the madness of cycles and emptiness, routine, rote, against insatiate wants and unfulfilment.

It is fitting to give praise and thanks to the Lord. (cf. Romans 14:11)