Sermon 32

Beati pauperes spiritu, quia ipsorum est regnum coelorum

(Matth. 5:3)

Blessedness opened her mouth of Wisdom and spoke: "Blessed are the poor in spirit. for the kingdom of heaven is theirs." (Matth. 5:3) All angels and all saints and all that was ever born must be silent when this eternal Wisdom of the Father speaks; for all the wisdom of the angels and all creatures is a pure nothing before the bottomless Wisdom of God. This Wisdom has spoken that the poor are blessed.

Now there are two kinds of poverty. The first is an outer poverty, and that is good and very praiseworthy in those people who willingly take it upon themselves out of love for our Lord Jesus Christ, because he himself was poor in this sense while he was on earth. I will not speak further of this poverty. However, there is another poverty, an inner poverty, which is to be understood in this word of our Lord when he says: "Blessed are the poor in spirit."

Now I beg you to be just this poor in order to be able to understand this speech; for tell you by the eternal truth: If you do not become this truth of which we speak, you will not be able to understand me.

Many people have asked me what poverty is in itself and what a poor person is. This I will answer

Bishop Albert said, that a poor person is one who takes no pleasure in any of the things that God has ever created—and that is well said. However, we will say it still better, and take poverty in a higher sense: A poor man is one who wills nothing, knowsnothing, and hasnothing. I will speak about these three points, and I beg you for the sake of the loving God, to understand this truth if you can.

If you don't understand it, don't worry about it, for I will speak of a truth that is of such a nature that only a few good people can understand it. To the first point, we say that that person is poor who willsnothing. Many people do not understand this meaning correctly; these are those people who through acts of penance and good works hold fast to their own selves, which they consider to be great. God have mercy, that such people recognize so little of God's truth. These people are called holy on the basis of outward appearance, but on the inside, they are asses, for they don't comprehend the real meaning of divine truth. Some people, it is true, saythat a poor person is one who wills nothing. However, what they mean is: the person must live so as to not fulfill his own will in anything, but that he should rather strive to fulfill the most beloved will of God. These people have made a good beginning, for their intention is good; therefore we will praise them. May God in His mercy give them the kingdom of heaven. But by the divine truth, I say that these people are neither poor, nor are they similar to poor people. They are considered great in the eyes of those people who don't know any better. Yet I say that they are asses and they don't understand anything of God's truth. Because of their good intentions, may they reach the kingdom of heaven; but of that poverty of which I will speak, of that they know nothing.

Now if someone asks me what that is, a poor person who willsnothing, I answer thus: as long as a person has something of himself which is his will, with which he canwill to fulfill the will of God, such a person does not have the poverty of which we speak; for such a person still has a will with which he can satisfy the will of God, and that is not true poverty. For a person to have true poverty, he must be so empty of his created will as he was before he was. For I say by the eternal truth: As long as you have the will to fulfill the will of God, and as long as you have desire for eternity and for God, you are not truly poor. For a poor person is only someone who wills nothing and desires nothing.

When I stood in my first source, there I had no God, and there I was the source of myself. I willed nothing, I desired nothing, for I was a free being and a knower of myself in the enjoyment of the truth. There I willed myself, and I willed nothing else; what I willed, that I was, and what I was, that I willed, and here I stood free of God and all things. When, by my own free choice, I went out from there, and received my created being, there I had a God; for, before the creatures were, God was not yet God: He was, rather, what He was. As the creatures came into being and received their created being, then God was no longer God in Himself, rather in the creatures, He was God.

Now I say that God, insofar as He is God, is not the highest goal of the creature. For thishigh a level of being the least creature has in God. And if it were so that a fly had reason, and on the path of reason attempted to seek the eternal abyss of God's being from which it had come. we would have to say that God, with all of that in which He is 'God', could not give even this fly satisfaction and fulfillment. Therefore, we pray God that we may be free of God, and that we may comprehend and eternally enjoy the truth there where the highest angels and the fly and the soul are one, there where I stood and willed what I was and was what I willed. So then we say: If the person wishes to be poor in will, he must will and desire as little as he willed and desired before he was. And in this way the person who is poor willsnothing

Secondly, a poor person is one who knowsnothing. Earlier, we have said that a person should live so that he lives neither himself nor the truth nor God. Now we say it differently, and will say even further: That person that wants to have this poverty must live so that he doesn't even know that he lives, neither himself nor the truth nor God. Rather, he must be so empty of all knowledge, that he neither knows nor recognizes nor senses that God lives in him—further yet: he should be empty of all recognition that lives in him. For, while the person was in the eternal reality of God, nothing else lived in him; what lived there was himself. So therefore we say that a person should be so empty of his own knowing as he was when he was not yet, and he allows God to act as He will, and the person is empty. Everything that ever came from God is directed towards pure activity. The activity that is allotted to man is: loving and knowing. Now it is a debatable question wherein blessedness really lies. Many teachers have said that it lies in loving; others say that it lies in knowing andloving, and what they say is better. We say however, that it lies neither in knowing nor in loving; there is rather a something in the soul out of which loving and knowing flow; it itself does not know or love, as do the powersof the soul. Who comes to know thisknows wherein blessedness lies. This something has neither before nor after, and it does not wait for anything additional, for it would neither gain nor lose. Therefore it is robbed also of that knowing that God acts in it; it is, rather, the same thing that enjoys itself in the same way that God does.

The person must be so free and empty that he neither knows nor recognizes that God acts in him, and thuscan the person possess poverty.

The masters say that God is a being and a rational being and knows all things. I say, however: God is neither a being nor a rational being nor does he know this or that. Therefore, God is free of all things—and therefore He is all things. Now he who wishes to be poor is spirit must be poor of all of his own knowing, so that he knows about nothing, neither about God, nor about the creatures, nor about himself. Therefore it is necessary for the person to desire to know or recognize nothing about the work of God. In thisway it is possible for a person to be poor of his own knowing.

Thirdly, a poor person is one who hasnothing. Many people have said that a person's possessing nothing of the material things of the earth is perfection, and that is certainly true in that sense, if the person does this intentionally. But that is not the sense that I mean.

First, I have said that a poor person is one who does not will to fulfill the willof God, but rather lives so that he is as empty of his own will and the will of God as he was before he was. Of this poverty we say that it is the highest poverty. Secondly we said that a poor person is one who does not knowthe working of God within himself. When one is empty of this knowing and recognizing, thatis the purest poverty. The third poverty, however, of which I will now speak, that is the utmost: It is this, that a person has nothing.

Now pay close attention! I have frequently said, and great teachers say it also: the person should be so free of all things, inner and outer, that he can be a place for God, wherein God can work. Now, however, I say it differently. It is thus: if a person is empty of all things, of all creatures, of himself and of God, and yet it is still true of him that God can still find a place to work within him, that person is not poor in the truest poverty. For God does not intend that a person have a place within himself where God can work; rather, it is poverty of spirit when the person is so empty of God and of all of His works, that God, if he wishes to work in the soul, is Himselfthe place wherein He will work - and this He does gladly. For if God finds a person this poor, God works His owns works, and the person bears God within himself, and God is Himself the place of His works; the person is a pure God-bearer in his works, in view of the fact that God is One who works within Himself. Just here, in this poverty, the person attains that eternal being that he has been, that he now is, and that he will eternally remain.

There is a word of St. Paul's, in which he says: "Everything that I am, I am through the grace of God." (1 Cor. 15:10) Now, however, my speech appearsto be above grace and above being and above knowing and will and all desire - how then can the word of St. Paul be true? To that there is this answer: that St. Paul's words are true. It was necessary for the grace of God to be in him, for God's grace brought about in him the perfection of the accidental to the essential. When grace finished, and its work was completed, there Paul remained what he was.

So now we say that the person must be so poor that he has no place in himself wherein God can work. Where the person still holds a place within himself, he still holds differentiation. Therefore, I pray God that He will make me free of God; for my essential being is above God, insofar as we take God as the beginning of all creation. Namely, in that being of God's where God is above all being and all differentiation, there I was myself, and knew myself, and created myself. And therefore, I am the cause of myself in my being, which is eternal, but not of my becoming, which is temporal. And therefore, I am unborn, and in my unborn nature, I can never die. In my unborn nature, I have been eternally and am now and will remain eternally. What I am in my born nature, that will die and be destroyed, for it is mortal; therefore, it must decay with time. In my eternal birth, all things were born, and I was the cause of myself and of all things; and if I had wished, neither I nor all things would have been; however, if I were not, Got would not be: that God is God, of that I am the cause; if I were not, God would not be God. (It is not necessary to know this.)

A great teacher said that his breaking through was nobler than his flowing out, and this is true. As I flowed out of God, all creatures spoke: God is. However, this cannot make me blessed, for in this I only recognize myself as a creature. But in the breaking through, where I am empty of all of my own will and of the will of God and of all His works and of God Himself, there I am above all creatures and am neither God nor creature, but am rather what I was and what I will be, now and forever. There I receive an upthrust that brings me above all angels. In this thrust, I receive such great riches, that God cannot satisfy me with all of that by which He is God and with all of His divine works; for in this breaking through, it is given to me that God and I are one. There I am what I was, and there I neither gain nor lose, for there I am the unmoved cause that moves all things. Here God finds no place within the person, for the person reaches with thispoverty what he was eternally and will be forever. Here God is one with the spirit, and that is the most true poverty that one can find. If you don't understand this speech, don't trouble your heart over it. For as long as a person does not become this truth, he will not understand this speech. For this is a naked truth, which has come directly out of the heart of God.

That we may live so as to experience this eternally, so help us God. Amen.

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