"All we have is given us"

"The more we look to God, the more our fear deepens, at first. We realize how utterly poor we are. We are utterly dependent on what is given us - life itself. Nothing finally belongs to us; nothing in us is autonomous. All is held in our relationships with other people and with the mysterious source of being. We must see that whatever we have we have in dialogue, in contingency, in connection with others who are beyond us and beyond our ultimate control. Even what is lovable in us depends on someone else's recognizing it and bringing it out in the open.

When we have an inner conviction of this destitution, we see with utmost clarity that sin is refusal of this poverty. Sin's major way of tempting us is through stupidity of heart, the privation of knowledge.

God acts like a parent toward us, loving us, endowing us and at the same time setting us free to find our own resources and responses. The poverty we so fear becomes the entrance to our inner riches: we own nothing, we possess no one. To take this way of poverty wakes us up to the plenitude that daily is given us.

All we have is given us, and given (we will see if we look hard enough) in abundance." - Ulanov, Primary Speech