Spiritual poverty

“ But meantime it is certain that, where there are a hundred poor bodies who suffer from physical privation, there are a thousand poor souls who suffer from spiritual poverty. To relieve this greater suffering there needs no change of laws, only a change of heart. ”

“ Still, those who take the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and who, in organized communities, devote themselves to works of charity, must be regarded as the most perfect organs of this Christian work. And these become thus voluntarily poor, self-denying, and exclusive, because not only is the healthy soul fortified and preserved in spiritual power by privation of the pleasures of the senses, but poverty itself becomes ennobled by the assumption, and its degradation disappears. ”

“ Is the right to possess and enjoy the riches of earth as it is now everywhere practiced in the Church part of what Christ has secured for us? Or, is it possible that the lack of faith in the beauty and blessedness of the poor life of Christ Jesus is part of the cause of our spiritual poverty; our lack of Christ's poverty the cause of our lack of His riches? Is there not a needs-be that we not only think of the one side, "For your sakes He became poor" ”

“ We are deeply impressed with the great destitution of these people as regards intellectual, moral and spiritual things. Poor in the extreme as far as their physical wants are concerned, they are still poorer in reference to the wants of their minds and souls. So great is their poverty in these particulars, that, in large measure, they do not, until approached in Christian kindness, realize it. They are without education, and without true religion; without schools and without churches. ”

“ Occupy a poor habitation; suffer inconveniences, yea, prefer them ever to slothful ease and carnal indulgence. Allow no amusements; turn away thine eyes from the pleasant sights, and thine ears from the pleasant sounds, of this vain world. Engage in no conversation, read no book, that interrupts thy communion with God; nor indeed any that has not a devotional tendency, unless it be necessary in thy calling. Get rid of the encumbrance of worldly property; sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, especially those who are in spiritual poverty. ”

“ Accidentally, there is this further demonstration contained in the poverty of the Holy Family, that, namely, the completest spiritual privilege, the fullest spiritual development, is independent of "possessions." It is no doubt true that "great possessions" do not of necessity create a bar in all cases to spiritual accomplishment; but to many of us it is a consolation to know that the completest sanctity humanity has known has been wrought out in utter poverty of life. ”

“ In other words, if they continue to live in faith they will receive what they want, their own will come, even though they be very inefficient as far as work is concerned. This is their spiritual theory, but it is a theory which, when applied, leads invariably into poverty both of body and mind. ”

“ Poverty was not a social state, but a spiritual; and consequently the poor generally were not the pauperes Christi, but those who, like the monks, had taken vows of poverty. From these premisses followed later the doctrine that gifts to the church were not gifts to the poor, as once they had been, but to the religious bodies. The church was not the church of the poor, but of the poor in spirit. ”

“ When shall we understand that circumstances which remove us from the experience of poverty and pain remove us also from precious means of spiritual service and profit? To be in close personal touch with the poor, the ignorant and burdened is to have simple every-day openings into the region of highest power and gladness. ”

“ No deed of man is greater before God than helping the poor. Spiritual conditions are not dependent upon the possession of worldly treasures or the absence of them. When physically destitute, spiritual thoughts are more likely. Poverty is stimulus toward God. Each one of you must have great consideration for the poor and render them assistance. ”

“ Charles F. Dole’s The Burden of Poverty are two—the new consciousness of the spiritual nature of man whereby poverty becomes a problem and the spiritual urgency to meet it due to the mighty idealism of religion. Whether conscious of a religious motive or not, or even in conscious reaction from something repellent in some religious concept, all to whom poverty is a problem and who are urged thereby to sacrifice for others are said to be moved at both points by a religious motive. ”

“ Poverty of body in itself mattered nothing; what Francis wanted was poverty of pride, and the external robe or the bare feet were outward and necessary forms of protection against its outward display. Against riches or against all external and visible vanity, rules and laws could be easily enforced if it were worth while, although the purest humility would be reached only by those who were indifferent and unconscious of their external dress; but against spiritual pride the soul is defenceless, and of all its forms the subtlest and the meanest is pride of intellect. ”

“ It is quite evident that religious poverty gave the key to the situation,—poverty, self-abnegation, the resignation of all temporal considerations in life, by men who had no families to provide for, no station to acquire ”

“ 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. ”

“ Though it may take the language of prayer, it is blasphemy that attributes to the inscrutable decrees of Providence the suffering and brutishness that come of poverty; that turns with folded hands to the All-Father and lays on Him the responsibility for the want and crime of our great cities. We degrade the Everlasting. We slander the Just One. A merciful man would have better ordered the world; a just man would crush with his foot such an ulcerous anthill! It is not the Almighty, but we who are responsible for the vice and misery that fester amid our civilization. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Can it be religion to regard, as marks of his grace, the poverty and misery that almost invariably attend our neglect to use the means of obtaining a competence in worldly things? Can it be religion to regard as blessings those things, those very things, which God expressly numbers amongst his curses? Poverty never finds a place amongst the blessings promised by God. His blessings are of a directly opposite description; flocks, herds, corn, wine and oil ”

“ Soon your riches will be cursed. When you are poor, you will not be able to find them. In your poverty, you will cry to the Lord. But 'Your cries will be in vain, for it will be too late, and nothing can stop your destruction,' says the Lord of Hosts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a melancholy reflection, that the wealthy are more careless about religious duties than the indigent, and that poverty and piety are so often linked together. I often observed, when we stopped at any town or village, which had symptoms of great poverty, that the inhabitants seemed also unusually devout. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How could it make it right that one is born to life-long illness, suffering and poverty, while another inherits both wealth and a sound physical body? Not even the certainty of future happiness would be compensation for present inequalities. But why should there be any such inequalities if God represents unlimited power and perfect justice? Why should there be any poverty when, if He really created the soul itself instantaneously, He can as certainly create any necessary condition for the soul? Why poverty and disease and suffering at all? ”

“ 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. ”

“ I consider that every time I attend a Labour meeting I attend a religious service in the strictest sense of the word. What movement can be more sacred than the one that has for its object the uplifting of man, the beautifying of human nature, and the restoring of that likeness and image of God which man has so long lost? Poverty is the cause of so much evil and degradation. Poverty is the prolific mother of vice, disease, and all that is vile and ungodlike. Poverty, then, is what we are trying to abolish. ”

“ Poverty is spiritual halitosis.’
Ravelston sighed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If it is your faith that you must live in poverty in order to live by faith, in poverty you must live.
But it is the Father's will and desire to give us the riches of the kingdom; and to have faith is to live in harmony with Infinite will; therefore, when we begin to live by faith we shall leave the life of poverty and enter the world of abundance.
To live in poverty is not a mark of spirituality. If you are poor something is wrong either with you or with the society in which you live. But faith can take you out of that wrong and cause all things to become right. ”

“ Seeing, if poverty of spirit were only freedom from covetousness, from the love of money, or the desire of riches, it would coincide with what he afterwards mentions, it would be only a branch of purity of heart.
4. Who then are “the poor in spirit?” Without question, the humble; they who know themselves; who are convinced of sin; those to whom God hath given that first repentance, which is previous to faith in Christ. ”

“ Does it mean that, just as He needed in poverty of spirit and body to die to the world that He might open for us the way to the heavenly treasures, so we need to walk in His footsteps, and can only through His poverty working in us, through fellowship with His poverty, come to the perfect enjoyment of the riches He came to bring? In other words, is the poverty of Jesus something for Him alone, or something in which His disciples are to share? ”

“ POVERTY AND RICHES I
The Christian doctrine, which has all the beauties, has all the audacities too. It has endeavored to make the sublime and daring notion prevail among the mass of men that salvation is reserved for the poor. What a magnificent thing! And if this religion of poverty has degenerated in the course of the centuries, with what consolation has it not bathed those thrice-happy souls whom an unbroken faith guides through misery and humiliation!
But there has never been a religion which has been able to found itself upon renunciation without compensation. ”

“ The old thought has informed us that he who would live by faith must expect to live in poverty; many have believed this and have therefore been compelled to let go of almost everything of value and worth in the world. What we believe must come, will come. As your faith is, so shall it be unto you. ”

“ Their very necessities almost compel them to seek comfort from God in prayer. Many of the poor indeed neglect these advantages and make their poverty a source of discontent and even murmuring against Divine Providence in this regard. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This being so, mark the word of our Lord Jesus to the present state of the professing Church: "Thou sayest I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, but knowest not that thou art poor, and blind, and naked, and wretched, and miserable." Yes, in the light of God, in the eyes of the Lord, in the judgment of the sanctuary, we live in a day of poverty. It is this which characterizes the day in which our lot is cast,—a lack of all true riches, whilst the air is filled with boastings of wealth and attainment. ”