What means „poor in spirit”? – Photo journal of a liturgy in the Chapel of Paramythia

Οur Lord said ”Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” . The Church explains this as the humbleness which we must all achieve in order to reach the kingdom of heaven. This is true, however we must stress that „poor in spirit” does not mean lacking in spirit, as courage, or zeal. Also, it does not mean a fool or having a reduced capacity of understanding things either spiritual or scientific.
Here „poor” has a closer meaning to „beggar” – someone who has the conscience that he doesn’t have enough spiritual wealth in order to live as he needs to, hence he is forced to beg this spiritual wealth from God. Matthew stresses „poor in spirit”, unlike Luke who says only „poor” in order to show that the wealth which we need and are lacking is spiritual in nature.
Based on Matthew 5:3 and Luke 6:20
The photos are depicting a humble and intimate divine liturgy from the Chapel of Paramythia with the Lebanese Bishop Constantine of Chrysopolis serving as a priest.
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e.s.
Thank you very much for this concise explanation and meantime comprehensive knowledge of lessons that should be learned from the First Beatitude.
Many people in the world do not understand neither total nor partial the meaning of this very important first Beatitude given by Christ, and hence they do not apply this divine lesson in their daily activities. Instead, pride is destroying our lives. People unfortunately learn lessons of being proud considering themselves the best compare with the others, instead of thinking that we should be humble and perform a job well with great dedication for only one aim: to please God. While we act based on this first Beatitude then each of us contribute for the society to make the world a better place as God would like for it to be.
Today I and many other people learned one of the most important and wonderful lessons for our future lives. All of this thanks to your great job in this excellent website.
God bless you abundantly and exceedingly always…
Ioan Toma
Thanks a lot – pray for us to continue our humble ministry!
e.s.
Sure, I and many other people, who visit this wonderful website, pray for you continuously.
It takes few moments for us to pray for you.
When we pray for you, we are blessing ourselves for the best of luck in our lives.
God Bless You Always!