"Poverty Defined: The Poverty of Being Human"
"Poverty Defined: The Poverty of Being Human"
The fourth and final poverty described in the Bible is the poverty of being human. This is the poverty of being human. This is the ideal poverty of Scripture. Jesus became human yet never sinned because he never rejected this level of poverty. He never rejected the limitations of the human scene, never fought or railed against it. He was happy to “empty himself…and become as humans are” (Philippians 2:7). It’s a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own smallness. That’s my best definition of Christian maturity. It’s very hard for and affluent culture to accept a limited world, and that’s why Jesus said the rich person cannot easily enter into the Kingdom of God (Matthew 19:23, Mark 10:23, Luke 18:24). I meet many holy priests who are recovering alcoholics. I can almost pick them out by now; there’s a kind of littleness from the very beginning, a kind of vulnerability, a relaxed-ness with themselves and with one another. They’re not living in their heads anymore. They had to face, at one point in their lives, their littleness, their poverty. They had to wake up one day and say, I’m an alcoholic. They are some of the greatest priests I meet. Humility and human come from the same Latin word, humus, dirt. A human being is someone, as we are reminded on Ash Wednesday, taken out of the dirt. A humble person is one who recognizes that and even rejoices in it! When Carl Jung was toward the end of his life, a student who was reading the classic book The Pilgrim’s Progress asked him what his pilgrim’s progress had been. Jung said, “I have had to climb down ten thousand ladders so that at the end of my life I can reach out the hand of friendship to this little clod of earth that I am.” That’s the poverty of spirit that Jesus chose and that he calls “blessed.” It’s his very first statement in his Great Sermon and his very last action on the cross.
Richard Rohr, from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction
The fourth and final poverty described in the Bible is the poverty of being human. This is the poverty of being human. This is the ideal poverty of Scripture. Jesus became human yet never sinned because he never rejected this level of poverty. He never rejected the limitations of the human scene, never fought or railed against it. He was happy to “empty himself…and become as humans are” (Philippians 2:7). It’s a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own smallness. That’s my best definition of Christian maturity. It’s very hard for and affluent culture to accept a limited world, and that’s why Jesus said the rich person cannot easily enter into the Kingdom of God (Matthew 19:23, Mark 10:23, Luke 18:24). I meet many holy priests who are recovering alcoholics. I can almost pick them out by now; there’s a kind of littleness from the very beginning, a kind of vulnerability, a relaxed-ness with themselves and with one another. They’re not living in their heads anymore. They had to face, at one point in their lives, their littleness, their poverty. They had to wake up one day and say, I’m an alcoholic. They are some of the greatest priests I meet. Humility and human come from the same Latin word, humus, dirt. A human being is someone, as we are reminded on Ash Wednesday, taken out of the dirt. A humble person is one who recognizes that and even rejoices in it! When Carl Jung was toward the end of his life, a student who was reading the classic book The Pilgrim’s Progress asked him what his pilgrim’s progress had been. Jung said, “I have had to climb down ten thousand ladders so that at the end of my life I can reach out the hand of friendship to this little clod of earth that I am.” That’s the poverty of spirit that Jesus chose and that he calls “blessed.” It’s his very first statement in his Great Sermon and his very last action on the cross.
Richard Rohr, from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction
posted by LuisVelasco @ 9:22 AM
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