Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
...but they were the sicknesses and passions of the soul. This wealth of theirs, while present, is death-bringing to all, but once destroyed, is salvation-bringing; of which wealth the soul must be purged clean — that is, must be made poor and stripped bare — and so offering itself already to hear the Savior saying, "Come, follow me." For he himself already becomes a way for the one pure in heart, but into an impure soul the grace of God does not slip in; and impure is the soul that is rich in desires and travails in labor with many loves, worldly ones. For the man who has possessions and gold and silver and houses, and holds them as gifts of God, and ministers with them to God who gave them, for the salvation of men, and who knows that he has acquired these for the sake of his brothers rather than for himself, and who is master over the possession of them, not being a slave to what he possesses, nor carrying these about in his soul, nor bounding and circumscribing his own life within them, but always laboring at some good and divine work — even if he should at some point have to be stripped of these, being able with a cheerful mind to bear their removal just as equally as he bore their abundance — this is the man who is called blessed by the Lord and named poor in spirit, a ready heir of the kingdom of heaven, not a rich man unable to live.
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