That phrase has been haunting my thoughts the past couple of weeks. It comes from a passage which I will quote in a bit. I have been familiar for a long time with the concept of standing before the Lord in one’s poverty. Learning to do so is not an easy thing. I find myself so often choosing what bits of my poverty to bring to him and hiding others. I’ll come to him with my inability to love my sisters very well, but I’ll hide my failings with keeping my time on social media under control. The temptation is always to hide what causes me the most shame. So I was really struck by this description of “unconditional poverty” because that means that I must stand before the Lord in all of my poverty, every bit and expression of my lack and my failings. But I know that is the only way for me to be open to all of his love for me and not just part. The times when I have responded to the grace to be completely vulnerable to him, hiding nothing, have been the most intimate. So, I pray that that phrase haunt me for ever, for I know I will never have what I most desire–which is his very Self–without unconditional poverty being my continual and habitual state of being before him. Pray for me for that.

“All that I am, all that I have ever felt, known, had, or desired–all shame and fear, all desire and effort, all failure and guilt, all capacities and incapacities, all experience and expectation–everything absolutely everything, is to be laid before him in trusting nakedness, and to be opened wide, in unconditional poverty, to receive his gift as he wishes to give it and this gift is ultimately his very Self . . . .” (Joshua Elzner, Responding to the Thirst of God)