Poverty of Spirit Quotes

“We must learn to accept ourselves in the painful experiment of living. We must embrace the spiritual adventure of becoming human, moving through the many stages that lie between birth and death.”
― Johann Baptist Metz, Poverty of Spirit

“There is a poverty of the average human’s life, who is unnoticed by the world. It is the poverty of the commonplace. There is nothing heroic about it; it is the poverty of the common lot, devoid of ecstasy. Jesus was poor in this way. He was no model figure for humanists, no great artist or statesman, no diffident genius. He was a frighteningly simple man, whose only talent was to do good. The one great passion in his life was “the Father.” Yet it was precisely in this way that he demonstrated “the wonder of empty hands” (Bernanos), the great potential of the person on the street, whose radical dependence on God is no different from anyone else’s. He has no talent but that of his own heart, no contribution to make except self-abandonment, no consolation save God alone.”
― Johann Baptist Metz, Poverty of Spirit

“[N]one of us drinks the chalice of our existence to the last drop. None of us is fully obedient. Each of us falls short of the human nature entrusted to us.”
― Johann Baptist Metz, Poverty of Spirit

“God's assumption of humanity.”
― Johann Baptist Metz, Poverty of Spirit