Those who have nothing

The helpless, the nobodies, those who expect nothing from themselves, those who do not put their trust in their intelligence, and those who are excluded from the synagogue … these are the ones who have access to the Father of mercies, who will sit them at His table. In truth, the Kingdom and the banquet belong to the poor. They are the ones who experience freely and simply, the gift of love. Since they have nothing, they feel that they deserve nothing. Everything they receive has the color and taste of gratuity.

As a result of their experiencing the disparity between human poverty on one hand, and the free love and the riches of the Father on the other, there overflows impetuously and joyfully in the heart of the poor that feeling, a mixture of faith and security, we call trust. The poor, instead of being depressed by their own nothingness, with its attending complexes and bitterness, experience a secret joy because of it. They understand that their very nothingness invokes, convokes, and demands and in some way “merits” the richness of the Father’s mercy.

Here is where that cry of confidence springs up, which seems more like a cry of omnipotence, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? (Ps 27:1). We perceive here a huge leap from the nothing to the all. We see the beating pulse of a heart full of exultation and defiance. Everything seems to be a prelude to the beatitudes: Those who are the last, who lack everything, and who precisely by virtue of their lack, by the law of compensation, will receive freely the fullness of joy.

From the book Psalms for Life by Fr. Ignacio Larrañaga