Dear Friends,
The eighth step in our meditations on the First Beatitude comes from Robert Powell’s translation of the Lord’s Prayer Course, available on the Sophia Foundation’s website as pdf. (For the first of these meditations, and their background motivation, see here; for the second meditation see here; for the third see here; for the fourth see here; for the fifth see here; for the sixth see here; and for the seventh see here).
The first Beatitude: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
The temptation in the wilderness may be conceived of as the tempting of the “poor in spirit”—the replacement of being nameless, poor, and hungry with false glory, false power, and the false kingdom. However, Christ overcame the temptation, because he had taken the whole of the body of Jesus in possession.
The conversation with his mother, the way to the Jordan, and the Baptism, the temptations in the wilderness—these altogether actually constitute the entire act of descent of the Christ.