What Makes a Person “Blessed”?

The Beatitudes are not prescriptions on how to be blessed. “I need to be poor in spirit (or just plain poor) so I can be blessed,” misses the point and leads to some interesting interpretations of how to live the spiritual life, and can sometimes lead us away from properly understanding what Jesus is...

Do I Want to Be Poor in Spirit?

Why in the world would anyone recommend that we should seek to be spiritually poor? I’m intrigued by the many interpretations of Jesus’ first Beatitude (“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”—Matthew 5:3) that present spiritual poverty as necessary to salvation. This line of...