By Teodoro Bacani Jr.

These days of economic difficulties and collapses, we hear of people killing themselves because of the economic ruin they have suffered. A German billionaire kills himself apparently because of failed investments, a billion dollars lost in what turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. A man kills his wife and five children, and then turns his gun on himself after losing his job. Equivalently, these people felt that they had lost everything because they had lost their money or means of livelihood. They remind us that at no time perhaps have the words of the first beatitude pronounced by the Lord in the Sermon on the Mount been more relevant than in these times of economic crisis: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

By these words the Lord did not intend to glorify poverty. Poverty, in the sense of a lack of necessities for living a decent human life, is an evil. Such poverty goes contrary to the will of God who wants everyone of the children whom he has made in his own image and likeness to lead a full life. The former president of Tanzania, Nyerere, a Catholic, whose cause for beatification has reportedly been initiated, remarked when he was leading his country’s fight against poverty, that he could not see God’s image in the undernourished bodies of his country’s poor. And Pope John Paul II, in a visit to the favelados (slum dwellers) in a Brazilian city told the poor inhabitants, “God does not want you to be poor!” Our present Pope, Benedict XVI also wrote in his first encyclical letter, “God is Love” that there was no place in the Christian community for a dehumanizing poverty.

Poverty, when it means a lack of economic necessities, dehumanizes, and oftentimes makes the observance of God’s commandments extremely difficult. We are just reflecting God’s attitude when we abhor and fight such kind of poverty. We should do our best to eliminate it from our midst, so that it can be said of us, as it was said of the idealized first Christian community in the Acts of the Apostles, “There was no one among them who was in need.”

But poverty in spirit is another kind of poverty. It is the detachment from the goods of this world combined with trust in God as our only Savior. This is the attitude shown by the rich man, Job, in the Bible, when, after losing his hard-earned riches, nevertheless exclaimed, “The Lord gives, the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!” This was also the attitude expressed by St. Paul the Apostle, who, after saying that he had learned to live with plenty and learned to live with little, declared, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”

There is more to life than our possessions, and all is not lost even after we have lost all of what we have. Those who lost everything during the wars and eventually recovered and prospered—and there are millions of them—can attest to that. One very successful businessman I know, Steve Tamayo, whose restaurant and catering business is in full flourish, told me how, during the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, he lost everything that he had built up, and it was already a small fortune. But through trust in God and “sipag at tiyaga” as Senator Manny Villar will say, he was able to come back and build an even better life financially.

There can be life after an economic debacle. No ruin need be permanent. “Habang may buhay may pag-asa” (There is hope while there is life), most ordinary Filipinos will say.

Our hope is based on our faith in a God who loves and cares for us more than he cares for the sparrows and the lilies of the field. But this hope does not rely on a Deus ex machina who miraculously intervenes all the time. This hope is based on a God who shows his goodness by equipping us with the talent and energy to accomplish his benevolent will, and who inspires people to live and act in solidarity especially in moments of crisis. Those who are poor in spirit will strive hard and will seek to work and bear the burdens of the economic crisis together with their brothers and sisters. This was the spirit of the Filipina I met in Burbank airport, in California. She said that their work hours at the airport had been shortened so that employees would not be laid off. “But it is Ok,” she said, “I still have my job,” and she was happy others could also hold on to theirs. Even in great difficulties, we should be able to say, “Kayang-kaya basta sama-sama” (We can do it if we work together).

Therein lies the challenge. We know that moments of crisis are also times of temptation to go it alone, unmindful of the welfare of others. During a fire, everyone rushes to get out of a burning hall the fastest way, and often a stampede results and people are crushed to death. (Come to think of it, a salesman was killed when there was a stampede to get first to bargain items during a post-Thanksgiving sale not too long ago in the US. Signs of the times!) But if people can work together, they will even save all of themselves, as happened in the recent landing of a plane on the Hudson River.

The poor in spirit will trust in God, and out of that trust will work diligently with creativity and solidarity. Diligence, creativity and solidarity joined to faith in God are what we need these days to survive the economic crisis and to even thrive as human beings. This crisis presents a danger, but it presents even more an opportunity to put to use and to use together God’s gifts to us as a people. If God is for us, and if we put our best together, there is no way we can lose. To the poor in spirit belongs abundant life.