Poverty of spirit

“ If; instead of this, poverty should act as the liberator of the spirit, awakening it to trust in God and sympathy for man, and placing it aloft, fresh and free, like morning on the hill-top, to survey the expanse of life, and recognise its realities from beneath its mists, it should be greeted with that holy joy before which all sorrow and sighing flee away. ”

“ See if you are glad when something is lacking to your meal, when you are passed by in serving it, when what you receive is distasteful to you, when your cell is out of repair. If you are not glad of these things, if instead of loving them you avoid them, then there is proof that you have not attained the perfection of poverty of spirit." Rodriguez then goes on to describe the practice of poverty in more detail. ”

“ On the surface the strife between prosperity and poverty appears very unequal, but to those who see beyond mortal existence, and who know that it is the sum of mortal deeds that determines the condition of all on the Spirit Side, how pitifully small and mean are all the ephemeral dignities and luxuries for which men and women barter their best, their immortal interests! ”

“ Poverty, therefore, makes a man superior to the world and the flesh, like an angel conversing with angels, breathing after Heaven. And such a one fulfils the words of the Apostle, “Seek those things which are above, not the things that are upon the earth,” that he may place his whole mind and love upon God, and may be made with Him, as it were, one spirit. Perfection, therefore, consisteth in this—that the mind be altogether abstracted from transitory things, and fixed on what is good and eternal; that is, on God, for which poverty affords an opportunity. ”

“ They have learned the poverty of their own spirits. They have wept tears, if not real and literal, yet those which are far more agonising—tears of spirit and conscience—when they have thought of their own demerits and foulnesses. ”

“ Print this in thy thought, that whatever virtue thou hast, be it never so manifold, if thou be poor withal thou and thy qualities shall be despised: besides Poverty is a shame amongst men, an imprisonment of the mind, a vexation of every worthy spirit. Thou shalt neither help thyself or others, thou shalt drown thee in all thy virtues, having no means to show them; thou shalt be a burthen and an eyesore to thy friends; every one will fear thy company. ”

“ After all, possessing honestly all that is necessary for food and clothing, ought we not to be content? Whatever is more than this is only evil, care, superfluity, wanting which we shall have less of an account to render. Happy is poverty, said a stoic, if it is cheerful poverty; and if it is that, it is really not poverty at all, or only poverty of a kind that is far preferable to the riches of the most wealthy, which are amassed with difficulty, preserved with solicitude, and lost with regret. ”

“ When, therefore, I say that poverty is the cause of a depression of spirit, of inactivity and of servility in men of literary talent, I must say, at the same time, that the evil arises from their own fault; from their having created for themselves imaginary wants; from their having indulged in unnecessary enjoyments, and from their having caused that to be poverty, which would not have been poverty, if they had been moderate in their enjoyments. ”

“ UPON POVERTY OF SPIRIT. Three virtues, he said, were necessary to constitute poverty of spirit: simplicity, humility, and christian poverty. Simplicity consists in that singleness of aim which looks only to God, referring to Him alone those innumerable opportunities which come to us from objects other than Himself. Humility is that conviction of our own inferiority and destitution which makes the truly humble man regard himself as always an unprofitable servant. Christian poverty is of three kinds. ”

“ You cannot conceive what a blind spirit of rebellion those miserable creatures display. Ah, how much suffering is needed to make these coarse natures understand how essential to their salvation is the poverty in which they are now living! ”

“ He could not therefore call to the fullness of the Kingdom of God the dull and the imbecile. Poor in spirit are those who are fully and painfully aware of their own spiritual poverty, of the faultiness of their own souls, of the smallness of the good that is in us all, of the moral indigence of most men. Only the poor who realize that they are really poor suffer from their poverty, and because they suffer from it try to escape from it. ”

“ With love to all, I remain your affectionate daughter,
"Mary."
Those only who have experienced reverses, or have seen parents suffer from them undeservedly, know how hard it is to sustain, beneath their pressure, a cheerful and buoyant spirit. We can moralize upon the comparative worthlessness of this world's goods, and call poverty and pain light evils. It is a false view. Poverty and pain are positive and great evils. Sin only is greater, and sin, it may be, is as often engendered by these as by the opposite state of health and affluence. ”

“ Though the courageous lives of the poor, their patient endurance of insecurity may reveal a nobility that shames us, it still remains true that these lives do not represent the most favourable conditions of the soul. It is not poverty that matters ”

“ There is a poor-spiritedness that is so far from making men blessed that it is a sin and a snare—cowardice and base fear, and a willing subjection to the lusts of men. But this poverty of spirit is a gracious disposition of soul, by which we are emptied of self, in order to our being filled with Jesus Christ. To be poor in spirit is, 1. ”

“ Ye see, brethren, how sweet ought to be poverty: ye see that poor and helpless men belong to God, but “poor in spirit, for of them is the Kingdom of Heaven.” [78] Who are the poor in spirit? The humble, men trembling at the words of God, confessing their sins, neither on their own merits, nor on their own righteousness relying. ”

“ No, it is not the holding of property, but the selfish misuse of it and the inordinate desire of material gain and its pleasures, which is opposed to the virtue of evangelical poverty. In few words may the Christian precept of poverty be set forth: Let no man set his heart on any material possession for its own sake, or for the mere holding of it; if a man is lacking in this world’s goods, let him not fret nor complain, but seek rather the life of the spirit. ”

“ If any one of you will know whether he is really poor in spirit, let him consider whether he loves the ordinary consequences and effects of poverty, which are hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue, and the denudation of all conveniences. ”

“ Every intelligent being realizes that our worst curse is the poverty of the spirit; that it is productive of all evil and misery, of all the injustice and crimes in the world. Every one knows that nothing good ever came or can come of the poor in spirit ”

“ it is not because of God’s poverty that the world is so slowly redeemed. Not the most righteous expenditure of money will save it, but that of life and soul and spirit—it may be, to that of nerve and muscle, blood and brain. All these our Lord spent—but no money. Therefore I say, that of all means for saving the world, or doing good, as it is called, money comes last in order, and far behind. ”

“ But poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue. It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright. ”

“ Wealth brings with it refinement, the spirit of conservation, while poverty inspires adventurous ideas, the desire to change things, and has little care for life. ”

“ She had early in life been brought up in indulgence; and poverty had come upon her at an age, when the sensibility of the heart are most alive. There can hardly, indeed, be a suffering more acute to a feeling mind, that has experienced the pleasure of bestowing, than to find its means of benevolence cut off, and all its powers necessarily turned into a weary, wasting struggle for self-preservation. ”

“ I said, very calmly. "If so, I will wish you good-day."
"M. Maxime!" she cried, rushing forward to stop me, "forgive me! have pity on me! Alas! I am so unhappy. Imagine what must be the thoughts of a poor creature like me, who has been given—cruelly—a heart, a soul, a brain ... and who can only use them to suffer ... and to hate! What is my life? What is my future? My life is the perception of my poverty, ceaselessly aggravated by the luxury which surrounds me! My future will be to regret, some day, to weep bitterly for even this life—this slave's life, odious as it is! ”

“ Is it an adequate cause for the gloom of the merchant, the discontent of the artisan, the foreboding sighs of the mother, the ghastly dreams which haunt the avaricious, the conscious debasement of the subservient, the humiliation of the proud? These are severe sufferings; are they authorised by the nature of poverty? Certainly not, if poverty induced no adventitious evils, involved nothing but a deficiency of the comforts of life, leaving life itself unimpaired. “The life is more than food, and the body than raiment;” ”

“ And many have been content with much less of them than we possess, and no health for their enjoyment—have been content without either sufficient food or comfortable raiment, and for years scarcely an hour of exemption from pain—content in great poverty and utter destitution, on the bed of sickness, in the gloom of the dungeon, under the foreshadow of martyrdom—consoling themselves with the assurance that God hath chosen the poor of this world, the afflicted, the persecuted, rich in faith, and heirs, of his heavenly kingdom. ”

“ But if the gift of raiment and food is imposed by poverty on those who gave them birth, they complain, and not unfrequently turn from their door the aged, palsied parent, to die, or live on strangers' charity. Sad picture, but very true, very true; poor human nature! And man, so capable in his nature of this ungodliness, boasts himself made after God's own image. ”

“ The most obvious, certainly the most obtrusive evil in the homes of the wretched, is poverty. The love of God, who has given for man’s use the earth and its fulness, the gospel of Him who fed the hungry and healed the sick, teach us to look with tender interest upon the poor, and try to redeem them from a lot as full of temptation as of suffering. ”

“ While it is not for fortune to “rob them of free nature’s grace,” and while she leaves them life and strength of limb and soul, the certainty of a future, though they cannot see what, and the assurance of progression, though they cannot see how,—is poverty worth, for themselves, more than a passing doubt? ”

“ Can you envy him thus tempest-tossed, while you yourself are placed in the quiet haven of poverty? Of a truth this is the imperfection of human nature; that it bears not its good nobly, but casts insults on its very prosperity. ”

“ For I despised all things that I might teach you not to set your heart upon riches and the fleeting goods of earth, but rather to lay up treasures in heaven, where neither the rust nor the moth consume them. [31] Did not I, when I was rich, and the Lord of the universe, an din want of nothing, become poor for you? No sooner was I born than I embraced poverty in my life, and practised it ever after, both in my life and in my death. Is not the earth, with its fulness, mine? ”

“ I explain so, — by this manlike love of truth, — those excesses and errors into which souls of great vigor, but not equal insight, often fall. They feel the poverty at the bottom of all the seeming affluence of the world. ”

“ I have never known what I fear many of you unfortunately have known, actual poverty—the pain of to-day's hunger and cold, and the fear of to-morrow's, or the dread of a master's voice, or the hopeless despair of unemployment. I have, I truly believe, lived as happy a life as anyone could wish to live, save for the misery of seeing so much cruel wrong and needless suffering around me. ”

“ Therefore, when I find in the tenth chapter of Proverbs this: 'The rich man's wealth is his strong city; the destruction of the poor is their poverty,' I shake hands with the author, and travel with him for this trip at least. The prophet does not say that their destruction is ignorance, or vice, or sin, or any of the ordinary blossoms of poverty which it is the fashion to refer to as its root. He tells us the truth—the destruction of the poor is their poverty. ”

“ But in the prospect of poverty, there is nothing but gloom and melancholy; the mind and body suffer together; its miseries bring no alleviations; it is a state in which every virtue is obscured, and in which no conduct can avoid reproach: a state in which cheerfulness is insensibility, and dejection sullenness, of which the hardships are without honour, and the labours without reward. ”

“ O holy poverty of the Son of God, more precious than all earthly wealth, poverty in which scarce one of us can follow Thee! For which of us has come into the world in straits such as Thine? In what language, in what story, shall we find examples of any of Thy Saints born under conditions so mean and so poor? ”

“ For I account not much of their simple poverty, but of their patient sufferance of the same for the love of God. But I more esteem that poverty which is desired, procured, and embraced for the same love. ”

“ They have made themselves poor: not by abjuring society, and shrinking from temptation, and leaving duty undone; but by using this world as not grasping it; by laying out, not on self, but on Him and His; by passing through life, not in the ostentatious and compulsory poverty of monastic vows, but in the daily abnegation of luxuries and comforts and advantages,—in the voluntary and unseen surrender of the working hand, and the toiling brain, and the spreading influence, which might have been used for self, to the labour and service of love. ”