I do love the megalynarion :) It's one of the few Orthros hymns you can get the congregation to sing along with enthusiasm. We are fond of the Theotokos.
"Poor in spirit" is one that modern Americans have a really hard time with. I think we're too materially comfortable-- we don't understand poverty the way the ancients, and the rest of the world, do-- it's a difficult metaphor.
I have seen "poor in spirit" explained as a sort of trust and reliance on God in all things, without reference to one's own material resources: a state that allows even a wealthy man to part with his life's savings without hesitation or regret when called to do so by God, knowing that whatever we accumulate in this world is by the hand of God, and cannot ever really belong to us, and that when we submit to His will, all things work together for our salvation.
This is why Mary is the archetypal Christian: total trust, total self-abnegation, thus able to contain the Creator. "More spacious than the heavens..."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2021-07-12 03:03 pm (UTC)"Poor in spirit" is one that modern Americans have a really hard time with. I think we're too materially comfortable-- we don't understand poverty the way the ancients, and the rest of the world, do-- it's a difficult metaphor.
I have seen "poor in spirit" explained as a sort of trust and reliance on God in all things, without reference to one's own material resources: a state that allows even a wealthy man to part with his life's savings without hesitation or regret when called to do so by God, knowing that whatever we accumulate in this world is by the hand of God, and cannot ever really belong to us, and that when we submit to His will, all things work together for our salvation.
This is why Mary is the archetypal Christian: total trust, total self-abnegation, thus able to contain the Creator. "More spacious than the heavens..."