Poor in spirit...

By creating the Third Order, though, Francis did accept the distinction between radical commitment and the necessity of living in the world. The point of the Third Order is to accept with humility the task of one's secular profession and its requirements, wherever one happens to be, while directing one's whole life to that deep interior communion with Christ that Francis showed us. "To own goods as if you owned nothing" (cf. 1 Cor 7:29ff.) - to master this inner tension, which is perhaps the more difficult challenge, and, sustained by those pledged to follow Christ radically, truly to live it out ever anew - that is what the third orders are for. And they open up for us what this Beatitude can mean for all. It is above all by looking at Francis of Assisi that we see clearly what the words "Kingdom of God" mean. Francis stood totally within the Church, and at the same time it is in figures such as he that the Church grows toward the goal that lies in the future, and yet is already present: The Kingdom of God is drawing near...

from Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI - hat-tip to Our Lady's Little Scribe

This is one of the very best thumbnail sketches of the Third Order I've read. Sometimes we forget that so often, in the Bible and elsewhere, God's really significant statements have been made to people outside, or on the edge of, the "religious professional" class. I don't mean this in any sense as a slight on priests - far from it - but simply to remind us that while God every day achieves truly extraordinary things, often rightly hidden from the public gaze, through the faithful service of the men and women he calls to the priestly vocation, he very often gives (broadly speaking) prophetic insights to people in very ordinary walks of life.

God is always given, incarnate in every moment and present to those who know how to be present themselves. Strangely enough, it is often imperfect people and people in quite secular settings who encounter "The Presence" (Parousia, "fullness"). That pattern is rather clear in the whole Bible.

Richard Rohr, from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

I don't really know how to explain even the little I know of how God works in this. All I do know is that it is he who works, his sovereign grace that illuminates what might seem to us quite dingy places, and brings his word to people who were least expecting it. And this is the point that always puzzles me - the people who were least expecting it. So we can't possibly prepare ourselves, train for this moment, like astronauts training for a mission for which they may or may not be picked. All we can do is what Jesus calls us to do anyway, follow him.

I am always struck by the order in which Jesus puts things in John 8.31-32: "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." It is the faithful, ordinary, continuing in the word, following after Christ, who called us to wherever we happen to find ourselves right now, that makes it possible for us to know the truth. It is "poverty of spirit" that makes it possible for us to follow Jesus just because he called us, without looking for rewards, without looking for great gifts and shattering prophetic insights, that makes it possible for God to use us as channels for his mercy.