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Today's word is poor.
yes, poor.
Dear me, we could say.
A terrible word.
... Used a lot in the Bible.
But why, why do you propose poor, why..
.. what do you find poor in today's liturgy.
Isn't there Luke who speaks about the poor?
Well, there is rather Amos who speaks about the poor,
"listen to this you who step on the
poor and exterminate the humbles of the Land".
You see.
Poor, evion, evion, tochos, in Greek. Or also tapeinos.
Tapeinos? Like wretch?
Exactly, tochos like beggar.
Well, beggar is not used that much,
but it means poor?
It means poor, more or less equivalent,
tapeinos is mean-minded, yes, mean-minded is an
arab word, by the way, yes, it means tochos in arab.
What is it, who is the evion in the old Testament?
Well, basically it is he who, lacking any
other defense, is defended by God.
You mean, God defends the cause of
the poor and the widow, is that right?
God defends the cause of the poor and the widow.
Why? Because the poor and the widow
cannot defend themselves, right, so you who
step on the poor and exterminate the
humbles of the land, doing something like this
you are doing something very dangerous because the poor
is protected by God. Because
he has nobody else who protects him.
It is a legal matter. It is also related to
the idea of Goel, even if here we leave it aside,
we reserve it, that which means redeemer, etc,
but anyway it is clear that when a poor doesn't
have anyone else to protect him
he has God to protect him. So to step on the poor means
to directly provoke, what did you say Dante?
The rage of God, right, the famous rage of God
of which we were talking about.
But then there is somebody else that protects the poor
and it obviously was the representative of
God on earth, his Messiah,
his "unto", namely the King.
The King.
The King's first task is not that of winning battles,
absolutely not that of making the laws because God
takes care of that, but to dispense justice,
namely to defend the poor and the widow, basically
those who don't have the possibility to
dispense justice by themselves.
So the poor is defended by God.
Right, but the poor of the
new Testament are the same thing?
Well, even in the old Testament the poor is,
being he who is defended by God, is also he
who hopes in God, so we move the accent directly
on the position of the poor who looks
at God and trusts him.
So, the poor is not he who claims his rights,
but who waits for God, who looks at God.
And in the new Testament we have a similar thing,
because: " Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven",
not intended with the meaning that since you are
socially poor then, because of a kind of retribution justice,
yours is the kingdom of heaven,
but because being poor you are
in the best condition to hope in God,
to have your hope in him,
so poverty is a sign of hope.
Then we have the so-called poor of the Lord which
are the Anavim, another word which is used,
this is a religious category, a little bit different,
to which the Gospel of Luke also often refers,
especially in the beginning, the poor of the Lord
were those that dwelt in Jerusalem and in its surroundings,
and who merrily offered themselves to
the need of consuming the proceeds of the sacrifices.
You mean the oblation?
The oblation of the sacrifices, because every day
an enormous quantity of sacrifices were
offered, and so not everybody
eat everything so..
The leftovers of the temple
Well, not only the leftovers, it was custom
that he who offered the sacrifice and then
made a sacred banquet,
would invite his family but also a certain amount
of people who were there ready for this need.
But since they were ready for this need,
and it was about consuming the sacrifices,
it had to be people who lived purity
in a particularly zealous way.
Well obviously.
Because evidently someone cannot consume
a sacrifice if he is not in a state of purity,
so there is a certain religious class which
literally lives of the sacrifices and develops a
spirituality of dependence from God who
literally donates the daily food from his
sacrifices. They are the poor of the Lord of which
we have been referred to for example in the old Ann,
and in the old Simeon in the beginning of the Gospel of Luke.
Those were the poor of the Lord?
Yes, they were.