The only idol which can do hand-to-hand combat with God over our heart is our self. One or the other must give up because the two cannot rule the same territory at the same time. “No one can be the slave of two masters” (Mt 6:24).
When our interior is liberated from interests, owner-ship, and desires, God can become present there without trouble. In the measure in which we make ourselves poor, letting go of every internal and external appropriation, and when this is done with God in mind, the kingdom of God automatically and simultaneously begins to unfold within us. If Jesus says that the first commandment contains and sums up the whole of Scripture (Mt 22:40), we can add, in a similar vein, that the first Beatitude contains and sums up the whole of the Gospel of Christ.
Liberation advances, then, along the royal road of poverty. That God is truly God (first commandment) is verified in the poor and humble (first Beatitude). Jesus affirms that “Blessed are the poor in spirit; the reign of God is theirs” (Mt 5:3). Love is proportional to poverty. Because of this, Saint Francis said, “Poverty is the root of all sanctity.”
Prayer ought to be the time and the means for liberating the energies tied to our own self-centeredness, making them available for service to our brothers and sisters. The process of liberation will carry us to the Kingdom of God, to the kingdom of community and to personal maturity, it will take place in the encounter with God, in a circle that runs from life to God and from God to life.
Extracted from the book Sensing your Hidden Presence, by Fr. Ignacio Larrañaga
