Doves On Distant Oaks

Becoming Poor in 'spirit'

In Christ's instructions that St. Augustine labeled "The Sermon on Mount," the first thing Christ told His followers that would bless them was to be poor in spirit.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:3).

Being poor in spirit can be misleading for those who don't understand what that means. After all, doesn't poor in spirit mean to be depressed, and so isn't rich in spirit a good thing? Did Jesus mean that we need to walk around depressed all the time? Perish the thought!

First notice that it's spirit with an "s" in lowercase. That means it's the human spirit of which He's speaking. Professor Bernard Lonergan—serving in the disciplines of theology and philosophy—considered the human spirit to include mental functions of awareness, insight, understanding, judgement and other reasoning powers. That's a fairly accurate representation of what we call our human spirit. It's what leads us in our understanding of the world around us.

Spirit with a capital "S" represents the Holy Spirit within us. The Bible tells us the Holy Spirit is the third person of the trinity who doesn't simply just live within us, but does so to change our lives:

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Act 1:8).

The Bible also tells us that the Holy Spirit can be grieved and can can actually work against us if we rebel:

But they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit; so He turned Himself against them as an enemy, and He fought against them (Isaiah 63:10).

The important thing to understand is that we cannot have both at the same time, because they are diametrical opposites. When we are rich in human spirit (more in touch with the world), we become poor in Holy Spirit (less in touch with the Holy Spirit). We never loose the Holy Spirit since it's always within us … we simply respond to it less. Conversely, when we are poor in human spirit, we become rich in Holy Spirit.

In high school, I played soccer. I remember running back and forth on the field, alternately trying to either score a goal at one end, or defending the goal at the other. The difference between human spirit and Holy Spirit is much like that soccer field. We are either working our way toward being richer in human spirit, or richer in Holy Spirit.

I can describe the feeling of scoring a goal at the human spirit end in three words: me, me, me. We would be filled with human pride, “being all we can be,” and every other cliche that advertisers throw at us when we take hold of the world. This is often called "the flesh" in the Bible. Living in the flesh, our attention to the Holy Spirit would be the furthermost thing from our minds. We would race around, hands in the air, in celebration of our personal accomplishment.

If we turned and headed in the opposite direction, with each stride we would be getting poorer in human spirit as we grew richer in the Holy Spirit. At the Holy Spirit end of the field, the "me" would have vanished and it would all be about God. We would become utterly humble. There would be no celebration of self. We would just be happy to lay prostrate on the ground giving glory to God.

That's what being poor in human spirit means ... total humility. We are fulfilling Jesus's two greatest commandments:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-39).

Where are you headed on the soccer field of your life? Toward spirit or toward Holy Spirit. A gold medal in one is trash. A gold medal in the other is worth your eternal life. Always be aware of the goal you’re headed toward.

Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.

– Romans 8:5-6

Keywords: Flesh, Holy Spirit, Human spirit, Humility

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