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Shorter Rules
St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925
205. Rule 205: Who are the Poor in Spirit? (R. 125)
The Lord says in one place: “The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life,”1 and in another: The Holy Spirit will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance whatever I have said unto you2.... For he shall not speak of himself; but what things soever he shall hear from me, those shall he speak”3—these are the poor in spirit, who have become poor for no other reason than because of the teaching of the Lord Who said: “Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor.”4 But if a man having accepted poverty, however it has come, directs it in accordance with the will of God, as did Lazarus, he too shares the blessing.
Notes
- Jn. vi. 63.
- Jn. xiv. 26 ¶.
- Jn. xvi. 24 ¶.
- Mt. xix. 21 omit τοῖς before πτωχοῖς K.