The kingdom of heaven can be received only by empty hands

It is really only the poor in spirit who can, actually, have anything, because they are the ones who know how to receive gifts. To them everything is a gift. --Simon Tugwell, The Beatitudes: Soundings in Christian Traditions

We are to be spiritually poor only for the sake of becoming spiritually rich, detached from what own so that we can be attached in a different way to what we cannot own, detached from consuming so that we can be consumed by God. --Peter Kreeft, Back to Virtue

Right at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus contradicted all human judgments and all nationalistic expectations of the kingdom of God. The kingdom is given to the poor, not the rich; the feeble, not the mighty; to little children humble enough to accept it, not to soldiers who boast that they can obtain it by their own prowess. --John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount