Only in poverty do we intensify a real confidence in God. Those who become truly poor in spirit no longer chase after external signs that would confirm the status of their relations with God. They surmount that insecurity. They no longer seek to possess a clear knowledge of this sort. They live instead in deeper hope, in the certitude of hope, without any need to have signs. They have crossed a threshold of trust in poverty itself, with all its obscure and indecipherable contradictions, as the only path to God.