Beati pauperes spiritu quia ipsorum est regnum celorum (Matt. 5,). Beatitude itself opened its mouth of wisdom and said, ‘ Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Angels and saints and everything that was ever born, all must keep silence when the eternal wisdom of the Father speaks ; for the wisdom of the angels and all creatures is mere naught compared with the wisdom of God which is unfathomable. This wisdom has declared that the poor are blessed. _ There are two kinds of poverty....One-is outward poverty, and this is good and much to_be commended in him. who makes a voluntary practice of it for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, ‘whose wont it was on earth. About this poverty I shall say no _ more. But there is another poverty, an interior-poverty, whereto refers this saying of our Lord, ‘ Blessed are the poor in spirit or poor of spirit.” And I would urge you now to be this same if ye 1 Authorship doubtful. Excerpt only.
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would understand my argument, for I do assure you by the eternal truth, excepting ye are like this truth we speak of it is not possible for you to follow me. Several people have asked me what poverty is? This we will now try to answer.
Bishop Albertus says, ‘ By a poor man is meant one who is not satisfied with anything God ever made,’ and this is well said. But, taking poverty in a higher sense, we say better still, a poor __man is one _who_wills nothing, knows nothing, has nothing. It is on these three heads that I propose to speak.
In the first place, a poor man wills nothing. Some folks mistake the sense of this ; those, for example, who win personal repute by: penances and outward disciplines (and are highly - esteemed, God ’a mercy, though knowing so little of God’s truth !). To all outward appearance these are holy, but they are fools within and ignorant of the divine reality. These people define a poor man to be one who wills nothing. Explaining this to mean that he never follows his own will at all, but is bent on carrying out the will of God. In this they are not bad ; their intention is good, and we commend them for it: God keep them in his mercy. But I trow that these are not poor men nor are they the least like them. They are much admired by those who know no better, but I say they are fools with no understanding of God’s truth. Peradventure heaven is theirs by good intention, but of the poverty in question they have no idea.
Supposing someone asked me, What then is a poor man who wills nothing ? I should answer this. As long as it can be said of a man that it is in his will, that it is his will, to do the will of God, that man has not the poverty that I am speaking of, because he has a will, to satisfy the will of God, which is not as it should be. If he is genuinely poor a man is as free from his created will as he was when he was not. I tell you by the eternal truth, as long as ye possess the will to do the will of God and have the least desire for eternity and God, ye are not really poor : ans poor man wills nothing, knows nothing, wants nothing.
While I yet stood in my first cause I had no God and I was my own ; I willed not, I wanted not, for I was conditionless being, the knower of myself in divine truth ; then I wanted myself and wanted nothing else ; what I willed I was and what I was I willed. I was free from God and all things. But when I escaped from my, free will to take on my created nature, then I got me a God ; for before creatures were, God was not God : he was that he was. When creatures became and started creaturehood, God was not God in himself but he was God in creatures. Now we contend that ‘ God as God is not the final goal of creature nor such great riches as the least creature has in God. If a flea had intellect and could
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intellectually plumb the eternal abysm of God’s being out of which it came, then, so we maintain, not God and all God is could fulfil and satisfy that flea. Wherefore we pray we may be quit of God and get the truth and enjoy eternity, for the highest angel and the soul are all the same yonder where I was and willed that I was and was that I willed. Thus shall a man be poor of will, as little
‘ willing and desiring as he willed and wanted when he was not.
And in this wise a man is poor who wills nothing.
Secondly, a poor man is one who knows nothing. We have sometimes laid it down that a man ought to live as though he lived not, whether for himself, or truth, or God. But now we change our ground and declare withal, that a person in this poverty has gotten all he was when he lived not in any wise, not to himself, nor truth, nor God: he is so quit, so free of any kind of knowledge that no idea of God is alive in him; for while man stood in the eternal species God, there lived none other in him: what lived there was himself. And so we say this man is as free from his own knowledge as he was when he was not ; he lets God travail as he will while he himself stands idle as when he came from God. |
Now the question is, Wherein does happiness lie most of all? Some masters say it lies in love. Others, it lies in knowledge and in love, and these come nearer to the mark. We, again, contend it neither lies in knowledge nor in love, but there is in the soul one thing from which both knowledge and love flow and which itself does neither know nor love like the powers of the soul. Who knows this knows the seat of happiness. This has no before nor after nor is it expecting anything to come, for it can neither gain nor lose. It is wanting, in the sense that it knows nothing about working in itself; but, it just is itself, enjoying itself God- fashion. And in this sense I say man ought to be idle and free, all unwitting, unaware, of what God is doing in him, that is the way to be poor. According to the masters, God is being, intel- lectual being which knows all things. But I say, _God..is.not being nor yet intellect_nor_knows not this nor that. .God is
“exempt from all things and he is all things. Being poor in spirit
means being poor_of.all_particular knowledge, even as one who wots not anything, not God nor creature nor himself. Here there is no question of a man desiring to know or recognise the way of God. In this wise may a man be poor in knowledge of himself. Thirdly, the poor man has nothing. It has been often said that | perfection means not -having the mortal things of earth, and haply this is true in one particular case, namely, when it is volun- tary. But this is not the sense I mean it in. I have already
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said, the poor man is not he who wants to do the will of God but he who lives in such a way as to be free from his own will and from the will of God, even as he was when he was not. Of this poverty we say, it is the deepest poverty. Secondly, we say, that man is poor who has no knowledge of God’s work in him. Being as free of knowing and perceiving as God is of all things is the barest poverty. But the third poverty, the straitest I am about to tell of, i.e. having nothing.
Here I would remind you how I have often said, and eminent authorities have said the same, that one must be devoid of things and of activities, both inwardly and outwardly, if one would be. a fitting place for God to work in. Now we say something else. Granting a man is bare of everything, of creatures, of himself, of God, yet if it is still in him to provide God with the room to work in, then we do affırm : as long as this is in the man he is not poor with the strietest poverty. God does not purpose in his work that man should have in him the place God does his work in; poverty of spirit means freedom from God and all his works, so that if God chooses to travail in the soul he must be his own workshop, as he likes to be. Finding so poor a man, then God is his own patient and he is his own operating room, since God is in himself the operation. Here in this indigence man is obeying his eternal nature, that he has been and that he is now and that he shall be for ever. ”
There is the question of those words of St Paul, ‘ All that I am I am by the grace of God.” Here the argument soars above grace, above understanding and above desire. The answer is that St Paul’s words are true; not that grace was in him; the grace of God wrought in him perfecting him to unity and then the work of grace was done. Grace having done its work there re- mained Paul as he was. As we should say, he was a man too poor to have or:be a place for God to work in. To preserve place is to preserve distinction. Why I pray God:to rid me of God is because conditionless being is above God and above distinction : it was therein I was myself, therein I willed myself and knew myself to make this man and in this sense I am my own cause, both of my nature which is eternal and of my nature which is temporal. For this am I born, and as to my birth which is eternal I can never die. In my eternal mode of birth I have always been, am now, and shall eternally remain. That which I am in time shall die and come to naught, for it is of the day and passes with the day. In my birth all things were born, and I was the cause of mine own self and all things, and had I willed it I had never been, nor any thing, and if I had not been then God had not been either. To understand this is not necessary.
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One learned doctor says, his breaking-through-is-nobler than his emanation. When I flowed out of God then all things said, _ There is-a-God. Withal this cannot make me blest, for in it I acknowledge myself creature ; but in my breaking-through, then as,
standing passive in the will of God, free of the will of God and) all his works and eke of God himself, I transcend all creatures ~
_and_am_neither God nor creature: I am that I was and that I shall remain now and for ever. Then I receive an impulse which carries me above all angels. In this impulse I conceive such passing riches that I am not content with God as being God, as being all his godly works, for in this breaking-through I find that -God-and-I are both the same. Then I am what I was, I neither wax nor wane, for Iam the motionless cause that is moving all things. Now God can find no place in man, for man has gotten by his poverty that he has been eternally and ever shall abide. Here in the spirit God is one, that is the straitest poverty a man can know. Whoso is unable to follow this discourse, let him never mind. While he is not like this truth he shall not see my argument, for it is the naked truth straight from the heart.of God. May we so live as to experience it eternally. So help us God. Amen.
LXXXVIII THE VIRGIN BIRTH