Dear Abby, the popular advice column in the newspaper still published today with authorship changes, once received a letter that describes the "if only" attitude:
"It was Spring, But it was Fall I wanted, the colorful leaves and the cool dry air. It was Fall, but it was Winter I wanted, the beautiful snow and the wonderful holiday season. It was Winter, but it was Spring I wanted, the warmth and the blossoming of nature. I was a child, but it was adulthood I wanted, the freedom and respect. I was 20, but it was 30 I wanted. I was middle-aged, but it was 20 I wanted, the youth and the free spirit. I was retired, but it was middle-age I wanted, the presence of mind without limitation. My life was over, and I never got what I wanted."
Arthur Rubenstein is reported to have claimed, "I accept life unconditionally. Most people ask for happiness on condition, but happiness can only be felt if you don’t set any condition." [internet]
Yet, however important depending on God is and accepting his will, this is only half of what it means to be poor in spirit and if we stop here with this meaning we are left with an impoverished, standard evangelical Christian explanation of “to be poor in spirit.” The other, more important meaning, is that there will be a coming reversal of circumstances for those who are unfortunate, the marginalized, the abused, those who live in poverty, so these beatitudes are not just virtues to attain in this life.
The beatitudes is “a matter both of the “now” and the “not yet”—glimmers now, fullness then—or, “Grace here, and glory thereafter when Christ comes again. [cf. Reading the Beatitudes in the Company of Others, Rebekah A. Eklund, The Covenant Quarterly (Online), 79 no 1 2021 p 4-18].
For example, in the Dead Sea Scrolls (The War Scroll 1QM 14:7), the poor in spirit are among those God will raise up to defeat the wicked nations, which speaks of the coming reversal—the poor will be rich as structural sin will cease and justice given as our First Reading Zephaniah 2:3 says, “seek justice, seek humility; perhaps you may be sheltered on the day of the LORD's anger.
The poor in spirit “rest in the confident trust that God is the ultimate vindicator. He knows of their hurts.” Source: the Priest magazine, December 2022].
For the well-off and the well-adjusted the Beatitudes are a challenge to how we welcome and treat others less fortunate than we are. As Helmut Theilike observed, “Love always seizes the eyes first and then the hand. If I close my eyes, my hands, too, remain unemployed. And finally my conscience, too, falls asleep, for this disquieting neighbor has disappeared from my sight.”
[Source: Kristy Farberm Journal for Preachers, 40 no 2 Lent 2017, p 25-28]
Proverbs 14:31 says, “Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.”
The term “oppress” means “to keep (someone) in subservience and hardship.” (Oxford English Dictionary). Keeping someone in hardship can be done in subtle ways as to “oppress” as to “exploit”, “take advantage”, or “mistreat.” Attempts to tone down what poor in spirit means by saying it’s only about being dependent on God is to miss the deeper meaning about God’s preferential love for the lowly and abused, often living in material need.
E.g. For nearly forty years, National Migration Week has been celebrated in January, although it’s now in September. Most undocumented workers, and I am referring not those massing at our southern border, among them drug traffickers and those planning to make fraudulent asylum claims, but rather those who have been honestly working and looking for work in this country for decades, who ultimately find themselves in occasional low-wage odd jobs where they are susceptible to exploitation and unable to exert their labor rights; they are nearly three times more likely to experience wage theft than legal workers, which speak of the need for meaningful immigration reform.
Saint Oscar Romero, who was the archbishop of the Catholic archdiocese of San Salvador, in El Salvador, told the poor, that “there is no redemption without the cross but that does not mean our poor people should be passive…God in no way wants social injustice, and whenever it exists, God judges it as the great sin of the oppressors.” Romero helped marginalized people reframe their stories by reminding them that are children of God, saying that by “making your whole life a prayer, and embodying everything that seeks to liberate the people from this situation.” [source: The Christian Century, January 2023].
So, these Beatitudes aren’t about our need for God, however true that is. Instead, it is about Jesus’ own compassion, his identification with the poorest of the poor, and it’s our mission in Christ to reach out to the marginalized, the outcast and broken, as Psalm 34:18, says: “The Lord is near the brokenhearted; he saves those crushed in spirit.”
Of course, one can be financially secure and still be poor in spirit. For example, for single people, who would have liked to be married, the catechism (1658) mentions the Beatitudes, saying:
“… because of the particular circumstances in which [single persons] have to live – often not of their choosing – [they] are especially close to Jesus’ heart and therefore deserve the special affection and active solicitude of the Church, especially of pastors… Some live their situation in the spirit of the Beatitudes, serving God and neighbor in exemplary fashion…”
Even more than this, “unwanted or unchosen singleness as a vocation might prove fruitful. Roger Mehl writes, “The most reliable callings are born from reflecting on a situation that is more or less imposed on us. A vocation is nearly always a way of accepting a situation that was first of all considered a limitation,” sprung from limitations and imposed statuses in life (e.g., Moses, Mary, Jeremiah). Giving truthful accounts of limitations and impositions, but yet showing how grace and vocation can flow from those, provides a more positive witness. Stanley Hauerwas says ‘... we necessarily live out a story we have not chosen. To come to terms with our beginning requires a truthful story to acquire the skills to live in gratitude rather than resentment for the gift of life.’ In short, I think the task before us is to tell a more truthful story, one that reminds us again and again of our true happiness, our beginning and end in God, even as we choose (or fall into) vocations for marriage and singleness.”
Source: Imposter happiness or the real thing?: marriage, singleness, and the Beatitudes in the twenty-first century, Jana Marguerite Bennett, Ex auditu, 28 2012, p 21-40.
We are blessed if we say that “the Lord had always arranged my life so that I have had to keep dependent on Him.”
Being poor in spirit is to die to self and experience the power of God. Our Lord is saying, “Let me share my happiness with you so that my holiness can be expressed through you even as you go through the difficult trials of ordinary human existence.” Robert Murray McCheyne said, “In all my years of pastoral ministry: “The greatest need of my congregation is my own personal holiness.” [source: internet].
E.g. When LeBaron Briggs was the academic dean at Harvard, a graduate student came to his office to explain why he failed to complete his master’s thesis on time. The student told him, “I haven’t been feeling well,” [as an excuse]. The academic dean responded, “Young man, I think it’s time you realize that most of the work done in this world is done by people are aren’t feeling well.”
The poor in spirit are those who have assumed the sentiments and attitude of the poor who in their condition do not rebel, but know how to be humble, docile, and open to the grace of God. As Pope Francis preaches, “The happiness of the poor – of the poor in spirit – has a twofold dimension: in relation to goods, and towards God. With regard to goods, to material goods, this poverty in spirit is sobriety: not necessarily renunciation, but the capacity to enjoy the essential, sharing, the capacity to renew every day the wonder of the goodness of things, without being weighed down in the opacity of voracious consumption.”
Amen.
