Word Finder - alms

definition

Something given to the poor as charity, such as money, clothing or food.

example

Alms are distributed from the weekly collection for the purpose.

They were privileged to ask alms throughout Scotland.

On the pewter badge which they wore were their name and the words "pass and repass," which authorized them to ask alms. In 1833 the appointment of bedesmen was stopped.

Then, if the tenure were found free alms, the plea was to be heard in the court Christian.

In the summer of 1530 he went to London, where he received alms more abundantly than elsewhere.

A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends, the Masons, and leaving large sums of money with them for alms, went away to his estates.

Some believers, he taught, may pass through purgatorial fires; and this middle class may be helped by the sacraments and the alms of the living.

About 403, some years after his return from the East, Vigilantius wrote his celebrated work against superstitious practices, in which he argued against relic worship, as also against the vigils in the basilicas of the martyrs, then so common, the sending of alms to Jerusalem, the rejection of earthly goods and the attribution of special virtue to the unmarried state, especially in the case of the clergy.

In the first two centuries the rite is spoken of as an offering and as a bloodless sacrifice; but it is God's own creations, the bread and wine, alms and first-fruits, which, offered with a pure conscience, he receives as from friends, and bestows in turn on the poor; it is the praise and prayers which are the sacrifice.

He might, perhaps, have given alms to the poor, or helped the orphan children of the town.

The determining episode of his life followed soon after his return to Assisi; as he was riding he met a leper who begged an alms; Francis had always had a special horror of lepers, and turning his face he rode on; but immediately an heroic act of self-conquest was wrought in him; returning he alighted, gave the leper all the money he had about him, and kissed his hand.

He had also, by virtue of an ancient custom, the power of giving the first dish from the king's table to whatever poor person he pleased, or, instead of it, alms in money, which custom is kept up by the lord high almoner distributing as many silver pennies as the sovereign has years of age to poor men and women on Maundy Thursday.

Monks or bonzes are very numerous; they live by alms and in return they teach the young to read, and superintend coronations, marriages, funerals and the other ceremonials which play a large part in the lives of the Cambodians.

Deaconries (offices of alms) and guest-houses were liberally endowed, and free distributions of food were made to the poor in the convents and basilicas.

Embassies to Rome conveying the English alms to the pope were fairly frequent; while Alfred's interest in foreign countries is shown by the insertions which he made in his translation of Orosius.

They seem to have preserved among them the primitive manual called the Teaching of the Apostles, for Bishop Longland in England condemned an Anabaptist for repeating one of its maxims " that alms should not be given before they did sweat in a man's hand."

She obtained an interview with him, and to test her resolution he told her to dress in penitential sackcloth and beg alms for the poor in the streets of Assisi.

A penance of several years fasting might be commuted into saying so many prayers, or giving an arranged amount in alms, or even into a money-fine.

St Francis did not intend that begging and alms should be the normal means of sustenance for his friars; on the contrary, he intended them to live by the work of their hands, and only to have recourse to begging when they could not earn their livelihood by work.

Truculent pamphieteers like Simon Fish, who wrote Beggars Supplication, were already demanding that these sturdy boobies should be set abroad into the world, to get wives of their own, and earn their living by the sweat of their brows, according to the commandment of God; so might the king be better obeyed, matrimony be better kept, the gospel better preached, and none should rob the poor of his alms. It must be added that monastic scandals were not rare; though the majority of the houses were decently ordered, yet the unexceptionable testimony of archiepiscopal and episcopal visitations shows that in the years just before the Reformation there was a certain number of them where chastity of life and honesty of administration were equally unknown.

For collecting alms by falsely claiming to suffer from epilepsy, Jennings is put into the stocks, which Harman calls " condign punishment.

The giving of legal alms, called zakat, is one of the five pillars of the faith.

It's my best alms result in five starts so hopefully we can go one better in Atlanta.

Give her now a dacent alms and let her go!

See, one comes gliding toward me, with superbly arched neck to receive its customary alms!

Not, indeed, that he was ever very careful about the " copper alms.

But Ortiz proved a friend and presented them to Paul III., who gave them leave to go to Palestine to preach the Gospel, bestowing upon them abundant alms. He likewise gave licence for those not yet priests to be ordained by any catholic bishop on the title of poverty.

To these ecclesiastical precepts and expiations belong in particular the numerous ablutions, bodily chastisements, love of truth, beneficial works, support of comrades in the faith, alms, chastity, improvement of the land, arboriculture, breeding of cattle, agriculture, protection of useful animals, as the dog, the destruction of noxious animals, and the prohibition either to burn or to bury the dead.

They are liberally supported by alms, direct all .popular assemblies, and have a decisive voice in intertribal quarrels and all matters of consequence.

Alms were often given even to non-gildsmen; lights were supported at certain altars; feasts and processions were held periodically; the funerals of brethren were attended; and masses for the dead were provided from the common purse or from special contributions made by the gildsmen.

In 1678, in a Discourse of Idolatry, he had endeavoured to fasten the practices of heathenish idolatry on the Church of Rome, and in a sermon which he published in 1681 on Discretion in Giving Alms was attacked by Andrew Pulton, head of the Jesuits in the Savoy.

Their relatives and friends are invited to dinner, and they spend the rest of the day in feasting and rejoicing; alms are given to the poor, and new suits of clothes are presented to servants and dependants.

He must indeed take with him the sacred fire and implements for domestic sacrifice, but until death overtakes him he must wander silent, alone, possessing no hearth nor dwelling, begging his food in the villages, firm of purpose, with a potsherd for an alms bowl, the roots of trees for a dwelling, and clad in coarse worn-out garments.

The soldiers live by plunder, the monks by alms. The haughtiest Abyssinian is not above begging, excusing himself with the remark, "God has given us speech for the purpose of begging."

From London he went his circuit through the country, animating the zeal of his brethren, collecting and distributing alms and making up quarrels.

It forms in both that part of the Communion service appointed to be said or sung, during the collection of alms, before the elements are consecrated.

With the growth of the episcopate, however, the deacons became the immediate ministers of the bishop. Their duties included the supervision of Church property, the management of Church finances, the visitation of the sick, the distribution of alms and the care of widows and orphans.

The sisters were not to be literally shoeless, but to wear sandals of rope; they were to sleep on straw, to eat no meat, to be strictly confined to the cloister, and to live on alms without regular endowment.

The Society agreed to allow him 15/- a week provided he ceased " soliciting alms.

Carruthers gave evidence of finding the man begging alms at various shops in Church Street at noon on the previous day.

The shelves rotate to distribute alms whilst maintaining the enclosed order.

Yet if praise be given as an alms, we could not drop so poisonous a one into any man's hat.

Forty times, it is said, he read through the Metaphysics of Aristotle, till the words were imprinted on his memory; but their meaning was hopelessly obscure, until one day they found illumination from the little commentary by Farabi, which he bought at a bookstall for the small sum of three dirhems. So great was his joy at the discovery, thus made by help of a work from which he had expected only mystery, that he hastened to return thanks to God, and bestowed an alms upon the poor.

One of these, Giving Alms no Charity, and Employing the Poor a Grievance to the Nation (1704), is extraordinarily far-sighted.

As he is giving alms to an old woman, he bumps into a quarrelsome corn-factor whose pocket-book spills onto the street.

We rise early to witness the unforgettable sight of saffron robed monks collecting alms from local people at dawn.

Later, in the 1800s, alms boxes for the poor were opened on December 26, with their contents distributed to those who needed them.

It faded away in the great Church, and probably Celsus was describing Montanist circles (though Origen assumed that they were ordinary believers) when he wrote 3 of the many Christians of no repute who at the least provocation, whether within or without their temples, threw themselves about like inspired persons; while others did the same in cities or among armies in order to collect alms, roaming about cities or camps.

If undoubtedly held in frankalmoign or " free alms," by a " spiritual " tenure only, the claim of jurisdiction for the ecclesiastical forum seems to have been at first conceded.

The one form, which probably arose from the conception of Yahweh as in an especial sense the protector of the poor, was that gifts to God may properly be bestowed on the needy, and that consequently alms have the virtue of a sacrifice.

The genuine Bedlamite was allowed to roam the country on his discharge, soliciting alms, provided he wore a badge.