The
words poor and poverty, quite often used in our teaching, may be a little
bothersome. If you read Matthew’s Gospel,
Jesus says, Blessed are the poor in
spirit… But in Luke’s version he says Blessed are the poor.[1]
Poor usually denotes people in real hardship to afford the basics of life…[2]
not us, normally. And let’s not be in
too much of a hurry to say that Jesus really meant poor in spirit… in other
words, humble… He said poor… and
poor is what he meant. If you are
economically poor, you probably tend also to be poor in spirit. If we are rich, according to Jesus, it’s
better if we are also poor in spirit. This
gets reflected in Christian Meditation…. as Fr Laurence Freeman expresses
it: so, when you pray, lay aside your
thoughts, including your good thoughts, or good insights, or bright ideas, or
pleasing ideas that you have, you lay aside your thoughts. This will give you
an immediate taste of what poverty of spirit means. And laying aside your thoughts means we're not
thinking about God at the time of meditation, we're not speaking to God, we're
not asking God for things. But we are
being with the Divine in that inner room.[3] Years ago, staying at the monastery in
Montreal where WCCM began, another guest at the time was a Benedictine nun from
the Pecos monastery in New Mexico. She
told me it had just dawned on her how, in prayer, the mantra is actually all we
have. We are poor on arrival. Our gifts and achievements, all our urgent
needs and our guilts, our lovely words, real as they may be, are beside the
point right now. We set them aside,
surplus to requirements, so as to be simply present, having come to a halt
right now, and with empty hands.
I
hope I am clarifying a little what we mean by poor and poverty, in prayer – and
I hope that it is in accord with what Jesus taught: …when you pray, go into
your room and shut the door… when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the
Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them… your Father knows what
you need…[4] Prayer, as Jesus saw it, is clearly best when
economical with words, or thoughts, or spiritual fuss. It is a matter of choosing to be still and
simple And it is a lovely paradox of
spiritual practice that sometimes we do this together, not alone – yet still in
unadorned simplicity.
You
cannot pray if you are clutching social status, or being better than others, or
maintaining conflict with anyone. Jesus
said that’s what the hypocrites do. Do
not be like them, he emphasised. First
be reconciled, says Jesus.[5]
In prayer, silence and stillness are always appropriate, waiting is necessary,
attention has priority… whoever we are. It
is what Brother Lawrence called the Practice of the Presence of God, and it is
never a smart idea to arrive with a personal agenda, a shopping list, or to
imagine God is in the hurry we are.
But
perhaps what we come to eventually, grown-up as it were, is expressed by C S
Lewis: I pray because I can't help
myself. I pray because I'm
helpless. I pray because the need flows
out of me all the time, waking and sleeping.
It doesn't change God. It changes
me.
[1]
Matthew 5:3; cf Luke 6:20. Luke literally
has blessed are the poor.
Translators who give us blessed are you who are poor are assuming
that not all of Jesus’s followers were poor.
[2]
eg. Mr Micawber: Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen
nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure
twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.” (Dickens, David
Copperfield)
[3]
Laurence Freeman OSB: Sources of Wisdom.
[4]
Matthew 6:6-8
[5] Matthew
6:5. See also 6:2, 16. Matthew 5:24
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