Blessed are the Poor in Spirit

Beatitude means Happiness. The Beatitudes are God’s eight step plan for true happiness. It begins with the poor in spirit.

To be poor in spirit is to direct everything to union with God, our perfect and lasting happiness.

Prayer is the most direct way to the goal because prayer is friendship with God.

By prayer we mean daily meditation:

• To read or recall some teaching or event from the Scriptures, the lives of the Saints or the Church;

• Exercise your mind and think about it, try to understand it.

• Then finish your mediation by forming a simple concrete resolution to put the teaching of Jesus into practice.

Allow yourself to just sit with God in silence, attentive to God in loving stillness. When we set aside our distractions to focus on God, we’re making ourselves poor in spirit, we are mentally setting aside everything for God.

But when I honestly examine my motivations, what consumes my focus is striving to be successful in my work, physically healthy and strong, I want good relationships, and to grow in knowledge and experience beauty.

God designed us to need these good things. So how do we keep them from consuming us? How do we remove these distractions and fix our aim on God?

We must practice detachment, practice detaching ourselves from these good things by prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

By prayer we sacrifice our time for the sake of friendship with God; by fasting we give up our comfort and pleasure for the love of God; and by almsgiving we give up our reliance on our money and learn to rely on and love God more.