{"id":6011,"date":"2020-03-27T18:15:58","date_gmt":"2020-03-27T08:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=6011"},"modified":"2020-03-27T18:15:58","modified_gmt":"2020-03-27T08:15:58","slug":"the-poor-in-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/the-poor-in-spirit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Poor in Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Beatitudes Series: Part 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

by Karin Zaki <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\n

The beatitudes. We read them in Matthew 5 and pray them in the 6th<\/sup> hour of the Agpeya, but what do they actually mean to me? How do I become poor in spirit?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start off by defining the term \u2018Beatitude.\u2019 It comes from a Greek word \u2018makariotita\u2019 meaning blessedness. St Gregory of Nyssa teaches that,<\/p>\n

\u201cbeatitude is a possession of all things held to be good, from which nothing is absent that a good desire may want.<\/em>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now let\u2019s explain the setting. In Matthew 5, Jesus is giving a sermon on the mountain presenting the life principles necessary to achieve a perfect Christian life. Rather than starting with a list of \u2018do\u2019s and don\u2019ts,\u2019 He begins to attract the people to the righteous way of living by revealing their eternal rewards. St Augustine says,<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as we love to see the rewards, we have to continue the struggle to attain them. Let us be kindled in our eager work to obtain them.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what does \u2018poor in spirit\u2019 actually mean?<\/p>\n

Usually the poor have nothing of their own and constantly ask for assistance\/aid. They are not ashamed to admit that they receive their simple sources of sustenance as gifts from others. Similarly, the poor in spirit have nothing of their own, God gifts all their talents, family, friends, community and spiritual\/earthly wealth. It is when one comes to the realisation that without God, they are nothing. Simply put, it is to be, \u2018humble and contrite in heart<\/strong>\u2019 (St John Chrysostom).<\/p>\n

We all know that the beginning of all sin is pride, acting according to our own personal will with complete disregard to God\u2019s will, as Timothy says, \u201clest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the devil.\u201d <\/em>(1 Tim 3:6)<\/p>\n

Logically, the opposite of pride is humility, so why then use the term \u2018poor in spirit\u2019 and not \u2018humble in spirit?\u2019<\/p>\n

St John Chrysostom in his Homily, beautifully explains that the term \u2018poor\u2019 means \u201cawestruck, and tremble at the commandments of God<\/em>,\u201d as Isaiah states in chapter 66 verse 2, \u201cBut on this one will I look: On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, And who trembles at My word.<\/em>\u201d St John then goes to explain two types of humility; humility according to one\u2019s own measure and humility with all \u201cexcess of lowliness<\/em>.\u201d The perfect example of this is the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:10-14. Here St Luke pictures a man (the Pharisee) who is pleased with himself for complying by what he thinks are the \u2018requirements\u2019 of religion. He is proud of himself and humble in his own eyes only. Sadly, he has falsified what it means to be religious. He has reduced the understanding of a spiritual relationship with God to a mere checklist of external \u2018religious\u2019 actions, such as the amount of riches he gives to the temple, as a measure of his piety. On the other hand, the tax collector displays genuine humility and it is this act of \u201cexcess of lowliness\u201d that justifies him before God. This second type is that which develops into spiritual poverty.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the world we live in assumes that everyone can achieve anything by themselves and even portrays God as a gift bearer for one\u2019s good deeds. Contrarily, display of humility be it in individual, communal or corporate situations is seen as a sign of weakness and a hindrance to reaching your maximum potential. In that way, we live in a society that constantly instils self-glorification and a sense of pride in us. It is therefore essential to always give thanks to God \u201con every occasion, in every condition and for all things<\/em>,\u201d for thanksgiving is the first step to humility since it is the realisation that all I do\/don\u2019t have is from God.<\/p>\n

From an engineering perspective, the spirit is like a high-rise building. To reach the heavens, this building will need to be quite high and so would require a very deep and heavy foundation set in stable rock. This foundation is modesty and submission. If this modesty was taken away, despite how high the spiritual building has been built, it will collapse with quite deplorable consequences. This is captured in Proverbs 24:27 where it says, \u201cPrepare your outside work, make it fit for yourself in the field; and afterward build your house<\/em>.\u201d That is, first you need to prepare your \u2018field\u2019 by admitting your sense of pride and with prayer, earnestly working to thank God in all things submitting to His will. It is only when thanksgiving and humility in submission become an instinct to every situation, that your poverty in spirit continues to rise till it attains the kingdom of Heaven.<\/p>\n

Glory be to God. Amen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Beatitudes Series: Part 1 Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven by Karin Zaki The beatitudes. We read them in Matthew 5 and pray them in the 6th hour of the Agpeya, but what do they actually mean to me? How do I become poor in spirit? Let\u2019s … Continue reading “The Poor in Spirit”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6012,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[202,212,82,211],"class_list":["post-6011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-pride","tag-beatitudes","tag-humility","tag-thanksgiving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6013,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6011\/revisions\/6013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}