| V. Choir | 21 July |
|---|---|
| Power of poverty of spirit | Margaret M., Jerome |
In the first of the eight beatitudes, Our Lord said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” That Our Lord puts this before all others, and that he promises eternal bliss, only on the basis of its presence in the soul, (as he promises the kingdom of Heaven to children), indicates that there must be something very great about poverty of spirit. The world does not appreciate this holy poverty… it ridicules it and mocks it… and that is a sign of its genuineness. It follows Christ in the foolishness of the Cross. In Heaven, however, it is considered great. She grows up under the protection of the Angel of Simplicity whilst still on earth, and she is welcomed by the great Sealed Angel of Power,
Saint Delim,
and sealed and preserved like a bride, just as Saint Francis said: “My royal bride: poverty.”
With the eyes of love, Saint Francis saw much further than the simple habit of the Friars Minor; he saw and loved poverty of spirit, this holy, royal poverty that desires nothing more than Him, that loves nothing more than Him and that only goes all out to attain to the simple being of God. This poverty has flooded Holy Church with new life: it makes man a child of God again. Without poverty of spirit, one cannot become a child before God, and until we are children, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven… God.
Saint Delim, the Sealed Power, standing next to Saint Sederim, the Angel of Contradiction, bears the sealed secret of the Bride Poverty. Who should know the bridegroom better than the bride? And who does the Bridegroom, the heavenly One, know better than this bride of His? She is still veiled, and the world does not know her. But one day we will see that in the inexhaustible contrariety of God, this poverty of spirit was the highest wisdom, the greatest treasure in the field and the rarest pearl. Whoever has found it has found the greatest, clearest view towards the one God, the only goal, which alone is necessary.
To become poor in spirit means to free oneself from all the complexity of the world and to recognise the one denarius, the Triune God, in His worthiness. It means to exchange it for everything one is and has, with ruthless consistency against oneself, in order to possess Him. Therefore, in the line of the stream of grace that flows over Saint Delim, it is the high Angel of Wisdom that stands above him and the Angel of Peace that stands below him. Poverty of spirit is thus—metaphorically—the highest wisdom; it alone brings true peace to the soul.
Prayer: O Great, holy Angel, Saint Delim, you carry your treasure, of whose value we can only guess, like a precious vessel before God. Let a droplet of this grace flow upon our souls, so that we may abandon all attachment to the riches of this world. Give us just a glimpse of the knowledge of the simple nature of God, that we may always hunger and thirst for the One and only… the One who will clothe the nakedness of the rich. Amen.