Quote, from The Pain of Christ:
When you think thus of poverty of spirit during Lent you can see how the prayer and penance which are then expected of the christian can help you. Pray about all the gifts that God has given you, material and otherwise, and ask him to help you to use them for him and not selfishly and exclusively for yourself: ask him to teach you to see him in all things, and all things in him; so you will achieve something of the vision of the saints, for whom all things are filled with God's presence and eloquent of God's love. And then penance, self-denial: if you give alms you are training yourself to be care-free about money; if you go out of your way to be generous with what worldly goods you have you are training yourself to see them as God's possessions and not as your own; and so you are using them, not in riotous living in a far country, but as part of the music and dancing of the prodigal's return, the festivities of home. And in doing that you are also doing something deeper: you are doing something to share in the poverty, the redeeming poverty of our Lord; and when your own self-denials bring you suffering, or when God in his wisdom asks suffering of you, the suffering of privation or loss, then you will know that you have thus a small part in this sorrowful and glorious moment of the Passion, and that in some small way you are following, naked, the naked Christ.
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