"Blessed are the Poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven." (Mt 5:3)
Spiritual Poverty as the Way to Open One's Heart to God Who is Knocking
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, [then] I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me." (Rev 3:20)
Open Wide the Door to Christ is the book the Missionaries of Charity were reading as part of the Thursday conferences when I arrived. I caught the last couple of chapters, I think. What I heard was enough to make the book stick with me and think I should like to pick it up and read it some day. I've had it in my possession for more than the past month and have only finally begun to read it. Here are a few quotes from what I've read, and I've only just begun. Though taken out of context, I hope they can shed some light on what it means to be poor in spirit.
"- the reality that spiritual poverty is the only path that allows us to obtain the only true treasure worth living for, our complete union with and participation in the inner life of our Triune God."
"We need to listen for God's patient knocking. He waits for us to open the doors of our hearts so He can rescue us from the temporal prisons of our own design."
St. John of the Cross calls "spiritual poverty", the stripping of the soul from everything that is not God.
God's knocking is His call to you to turn your head and fix the gaze of your soul in His direction. He wants to give you His heart and, in this way, fill the emptiness of your human heart which is greedy for garbage.
He has to crush the barricades that surround the heart and reconstruct our interior selves such that our interior selves will be pleasing to Him, not to us.
... the path to poverty entails turning our hearts away from the things to which we are attached so that we are not enslaved by them.
God desires to give you the freedom of spiritual poverty... (losing something - paraphrased) is His way of asking you to accept loss so that you may become poor and free for Him.
At present, much of this sounds painful. Yet, we are taught to believe, through the examples of the saints, joy will come from all this. After all, we were not made for this world, but for eternity, for "participation in the inner life of our Triune God." Our reward is not to be had on earth, but to be stored up in heaven to be given to us when we arrive.
I pray the beginning of your Lent is blessed, as "our Lenten penance may be more effective if we fail in our resolution than if we succeed, for its purpose is not to confirm us in our sense of virtue, but to bring home to us our radical need of salvation." "Jesus is Savior, but he will only save those who know their need for salvation." - Mark Searle, the Spirit of Lent
I
feel like a leper. As soon as people figure out that I’m not calling
from a local location, and I work for a business where my sole job is to
ask people if they want to advertise on a Catholic parish’s website,
they get cold. Some people have a natural phobia of sales people. Some
just don’t want to talk to a stranger. Others, well, I don’t know what
to say about them.
There
are points in my day where I don’t want to keep calling these
businesses, because I am, eighty percent certain I’ll be rejected.
Actually, they aren’t rejecting me and I cannot take this personally.
They are rejecting the opportunity to advertise on a website. However,
I’ve learned that doing what I don’t want to do is good for me and good
for business. I have to sift out all the “no’s” to find the “yeses”.
Most times that’s about one in sixty at this point, but hey, that’s what
makes what I do challenging.
I
didn’t like it for the first two weeks, I admit. Cold calling is not
fun. But the environment in which I work, the people I get to have lunch
with, and ping pong are all great. Being a Sponsorship Sales
Representative is growing my mental toughness. I don’t want to call
these people, but you know what, I can’t avoid it and there is no point
in wasting my time. I’m better off just calling the people, and asking
them if they would be interested in supporting a parish in this manner.
Sometimes there is a grouch on the other end of the phone, sometimes
there’s a little old lady who has squirrels and birds in her attic and a
skunk under her house who is still very joyful about life. (I talked
with her this morning. She never married and doesn’t have any kids, so
there is no one to take care of her home except for her. The alterations
lady in Kingman, if anyone is looking for a kind deed to do or an
elderly person to go visit and spend time with.)
One
of my realizations today, and I’ve been gradually discovering over the
last three weeks, is that I can pray for the people I talk to, whether
it be the couple who just took over a general store, the insurance man
who is venturing out on his own, of just someone who might not be having
the best of days, I can pray for these complete strangers. I may never
know what comes of them or if my prayers and efforts have any effect on
them, but nonetheless, I can pray for them.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Sounds like something only a lunatic would do, right?
Then I guess I qualify. Ever since my time with the Missionaries of Charity, poverty, or growing in poverty has been a component of my daily prayer. First, in reflection of the Nativity, and the poverty Christ undertook to become like us.
"No one, whether shepherd or wise man, can approach God here below except by kneeling before the manger at Bethlehem and adoring him hidden in the weakness of a new-born child." (CCC 563)
Second, in light of my own poverty. Once you've moved past material poverty, which in reality I still have many things, mostly useful things, you move on to spiritual poverty, social poverty, and sometimes intellectual poverty. Sounds like it could be painful, and in many ways it is. At the same time, there is so much beauty in this kind of poverty. One of the main lessons I'm still learning that I understand God to be teaching me is to find my worth in being a beloved daughter of God. Not in what I do with my day, who I spend time with, or how I'm contribute to the work of the Church.
I've been putting off writing a "Christmas letter" with the traditional updates of what's been going on in my life. Mostly I've been hoping to be able to include what my new place of employment will be. However, it seems that God is continuing to humble me. The humiliation of telling people you are job searching or unemployed continues. As it does, he is increasing my receptivity, or my willingness to accept whatever it is he is preparing for me or preparing me for. There have been mountains and valleys especially throughout the past two months. God has given me just enough affirmation or direction to make it through the next few days or the next week. In the words of Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman:
"Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene—one step enough for me."
Third, in understanding that NOTHING I do can hinder or change His love for me. I am little and pray, like St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, pray to love my littleness. I am nothing without Him. 1 John 4:19 states, "We love because he first loved us." He love us. Oh, how He love us. I need not have words, prayers, thoughts, or books when I go to visit Him in the Blessed Sacrament. However, this is often times my attitude towards prayer, towards my relationship with God. Too often, I do all the talking. Poverty of me. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta writes in No Greater Love,
"We too are called to withdraw at certain intervals into deeper silence and aloneness with God, together as a community as well as personally. To be alone with Him, not with our books, thoughts, and memories but completely stripped of everything, to dwell lovingly in His presence - silent, empty, expectant, and motionless."
Thus He is growing my poverty in prayer as well. Should I stop praying for poverty? No, that's like saying I should stop praying for trust, or patience or humility, or for the grace to respond to grace. As I continue to pray for poverty, there is no doubt that God will provide me with the grace, strength and opportunities for poverty. St. Francis of Assisi says, "The opposite of love is possession." Thus in my poverty, I am growing in love. "God is love." (1 John 4:8,16)
One of the many lessons learned while spending my five weeks with the Missionaries of Charity was being childlike. The virtue of being childlike is that of obedience, or in the case of the consecrated religious, it is a vow they take. There is grace to be had in obedience.
The homeless shelter that the MCs operate is a night shelter for women and children. One evening, when it was time for lights out and the ladies continued to talk, Sr. Marie opted to give the ladies a catechesis lesson in conforming ourselves to God's will. Responding to a question one of the ladies asked, she explained that when we have a question we should take it to prayer, study scripture, etc. But ultimately, she explained how when we obey, there is grace. Knowing now there is grace in obedience, there were numerous occasions where I felt very childlike, some times because of my poor choices, other times because of my lack of understanding, and others because I was given the grace to recognize that I am child of God.
One evening, when I was still learning the schedule, I opted to pray Vespers by myself. Fortunately, Sr. Mercita noticed what I was doing and said in a stern but loving voice, "Divine Office will be at 7:30." She continued to look at me until I closed my breviary. Leaving, I felt like I had been kicked out of the chapel. A short while later, I found myself outside reading Abandonment to Divine Providence. It was a small change of heart, but the prayers with Srs. proved to be even more fruitful than it would have been by myself. And I needed to read from that book that evening.
Any time I had to carry out or live out the rules of the shelter in regards to how I served the ladies was tough, as the rules weren't my own and I didn't understand the reasoning behind some of them. I was chastised a little and in a loving way for returning cell phones to the ladies five minutes too soon. Other times, I just forgot to remind the ladies of the rules, especially in regards to clean-up, laundry and dishes, because I wasn't yet used to them.
On many occasions, I felt like a little kid when interacting with, serving beside, or talking to one of the MC sisters. They themselves have such childlike humility and obedience, one can't help but to experience it through them. Whether they were explaining something new to me, or something I had already heard from another sister.
From my journal: "I was such a child this morning. After setting out breakfast for the ladies and having heard the doorbell ring twice, as I was sweeping the floor of my room, I said in my mind, 'if mass time has changed, someone better tell me.' A short while later, Sr. Marie was calling my name. As I got to the chapel, I looked at my schedule to realize that the Wednesday morning mass is always at 6:30 instead of 7:00. Humbled." God responded to my request, though I'm not so sure I deserved it.
Another excerpt: "I'm such a little kid. I'm so eager to share myself with the sisters in many ways. This evening, for instance, I was responding to a letter that had been written to me on a Buca di Beppo menu, to which had been afixed a picture of the person's family and a Blessed Teresa of Calcutta holy card with a note "Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, guide Jackie." I had opted to spend that portion of my evening in the sacristy, the quietest place I could find in the shelter, honestly with hopes of being able to show one of the sisters should they happen to walk in..."
One of the volunteers with whom I spent one of my Fridays expressed to me the beauty of the vow of obedience. "To be told to do something, to stop what you are doing and go do it..." In some ways it is a freedom to not have to make your own decisions. Vita, the volunteer, also expressed how we should be obedient to the sisters when we are at the shelter or the soup kitchen and working with, for, and beside them.
At one point in my experience, I was the pester-some child, asking God, "Why? But why? How? But How?" Have you even been or seen that little kid asking, "Why daddy, why?"
One Thursday evening, a couple of times I attempted to go to the chapel, but the door was locked. Thinking there had to be some reason, I decided I would not say night prayer with sisters, but would go ahead a get some sleep. Fortunately, Sr. Romero had come to give a new set of sheets to one of the ladies, during which she asked if I was coming to prayer, and invited me to join them for adoration from 11-12 that night. "Going to the chapel, I felt like I was-had been childish with a loved one, and was coming to make up or admit my fault."
"How do you give Jesus love to love? By your confidence in Him." - I Believe in Love by Fr. Jean C. J. d'Elbee
"I think little children pleases their parents as much when they sleep as when they are awake." - St. Therese of Lisieux
"When we say: Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we are asking him to make us obedient so that his will may be done in us as it is done in heaven by his angels."
Finally, I leave you with this prayer, in hopes that you, too, will grow in childlikeness and obedience.
St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face: Teach us to follow your way of confidence and trust. Help us to realize that a Father's love watches over us each day of our lives. Give us your own faith and trust, so that we may walk in darkness as in the light, holding fast to the way of love, knowing as you did, that everything is grace.
