The BEATITUDES, PART VII

[sanctus]

The Beatitudes, part 1



By Father C. G. Vaillancourt

A NOBLE BEGINNING
"Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him, and he opened his mouth and taught them...." St. Matthew tells us that Jesus began his public ministry by going about preaching, "... saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.’" Matthew then tells us that Jesus called Simon, Andrew, James and John. "And he went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people" (Mt. 4:17 - 24).
These events take place in the fourth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, which records the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. The remaining twenty-four chapters of the Gospel read very much like a footnote to what Matthew tells us here. Until we read of the passion and resurrection of Our Saviour, we must search the Gospel very hard to find Jesus doing anything except preaching, calling, teaching and healing.

• ... and [he] taught them, saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" (Mt. 5:2 - 5).

For most of us, the Beatitudes are synonymous with the Sermon on the Mount, but in fact the Beatitudes are only the introduction to the sermon. The sermon itself takes up three chapters in Matthew’s gospel, and includes the Our Father as well as Jesus’ telling the disciples they are the light of the world and salt of the earth. This long sermon is the first of Jesus’ sermons that we hear, and it stands as a summary of nearly everything else Jesus will preach. He will amplify the message with parables and other examples, but he will never change the message he preaches here.

Two Linguistic Points: "Who" & "What" in the Beatitudes
Whenever we read Jesus’ words in the Gospel we must pay attention to whom Jesus is speaking. All His words are important, but some are aimed more directly at us than others. When Jesus preaches His Sermon on the Mount, St. Matthew tells us that Jesus addresses his disciples. This means we ought to sit up and take notice, because whenever we find Jesus talking to the disciples, he is talking to us, the Church.
St. John Chrysostom said,

• He said not "this or that person," but "they" who do so are blessed. So that though thou be a slave, a beggar, in poverty, a stranger, unlearned, there is nothing to hinder thee from being blessed, if thou emulate this virtue (Hom. XV).

Chrysostom also remarks, "He doth not introduce what he saith by way of advice or commandments, but by way of blessing, so making His word less burthensome, and opening to all the course of His discipline" (Ibid.).

A Connection to the Past
By telling us that Jesus went up a mountain to preach, St. Matthew wants us to identify Jesus - the giver of the New Law - with Moses, the giver of the Old. Moses came down from Sinai with the Ten Commandments, imperative instructions for the Israelites to obey. But he says

• ... this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven that you should say ‘Who will go up for us... and bring it to us.... Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it back to us that we may hear and do it? But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart’ (Dt. 30. 11-14).

Moses’ spoken words suggest that the words written on the tablets are a reminder of something the Israelites already knew, i.e., commandments written on their hearts. The new Moses doesn’t use an imperative at all; He knows the law is in our heart. Jesus simply states things as they are, states them for the benefit of everyone, and invites us to consult our hearts to see whether they equip us to enjoy the happiness he describes.

St. Thomas Aquinas on Happiness
St. Thomas Aquinas says that there are three kinds of happiness (ST I-II, 69:3): the happiness of sensuality, the happiness of activity, and the happiness of contemplation. Sensual happiness is an obstacle to future happiness, because (as we shall see) it is opposed to reason. A second kind of happiness is the happiness of the active life. This is a life of good work, not simply exercise or mindless running around, and it disposes us to future happiness.
The third type of happiness is the happiness of the contemplative life. The mystics among us enjoy perfect contemplative happiness even now, as the writings of St. Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila demonstrate. This happiness is something the rest of us will enjoy fully only in heaven. If our contemplative happiness is imperfect - and that is what most of us experience - it is an introduction to what we have to look forward to in the future.

The True Meaning of Perfection
Here It might be worthwhile to point out that when our theology says something is "imperfect" it does not mean that it is deformed, or ugly, or bad; it means that it is incomplete. Imperfect diamonds are still diamonds, after all, and imperfect contrition is sufficient to gain forgiveness for sin in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Our happiness will be perfect in heaven because in heaven there will be nothing to add to it. In the meantime, the imperfect happiness we enjoy as a result of our sacramental and prayer life is a powerful aid to virtue, and a powerful reminder of what we have to look forward to in heaven.

Sensual Happiness
When we think of sensuality, the first things that come to mind are probably food and sex. But "things", in general, power, the honours that distinguish us, and simply the indulgence of following our own inclinations are also a part of this defective happiness. And the first three beatitudes promise a reward to those who are willing to forego this happiness, either by moderating our use of the "things" that make us happy, or, for the truly heroic among us, by turning aside from them altogether.

Poverty of Spirit & The Responsibility of Wealth
When we consider poverty of spirit, the first thing we need to remember is that economic destitution in itself is neither noble nor ennobling. Nor is there anything intrinsically degrading about being rich. Scripture commends the poor because the economically deprived have nothing to hang onto except the promise that things will be better in a better world. And the Bible condemns the rich because a spirit of irresponsibility often accompanies wealth.

A Cautionary Example
We see this spirit of irresponsibility, of course, in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man is condemned to hell both for what he has done and for what he has failed to do. His sin of commission, St. Luke tells us, is that he dressed in linen and ate "sumptuously" every day. The law says that we shall enjoy a Sabbath’s rest on one day and labour on the others. What we wear to dinner on the Sabbath may be optional these days, but many of us still look forward to a better meal on that day than we enjoy the rest of the week. The rich man’s sin is that he has turned every day into a Sabbath, and is doing nothing productive with his time. His sin of omission is not some wrong he has done to Lazarus, but that he has failed even to see him.
St. John Chryostom, always alert to the world’s injustice, commends the voluntary Poverty of Spirit, by which we are willing to deny ourselves to relieve the distress of others. He says,

• ...in this world, as often as we run into these men [whom we have helped] we will derive great pleasure from meeting them, because we will recall the good turn we did them. When we see them in the next world, before the dread tribunal of judgement, we will experience a great confidence. When the unjust, the greedy, the plunderers... go before this tribunal and see their victims... they will not be able to open their mouths or to say a word in their own defense... (Discourse VII).

The Irrationality of Sensual Happiness
Sensual happiness, such as the Rich Man in the parable enjoys, is not wrong because food or sex, or wealth are inherently bad, but because we want too much of these things or because we will accept only the highest quality in them. Excellence and abundance - we might also call them quantity and quality - are attributes of heaven, because only God can satisfy our desire for everything good. Because we cannot expect complete abundance or absolute excellence in this life, St. Thomas concludes that sensual happiness is unreasonable. A more modern writer, G.K. Chesterton likewise observed that a person can be a glutton by eating very little but at the same time being very picky about what one will eat.

The Heroic Example of the Saints
St. Francis of Assisi, not surprisingly, is the exemplar of Poverty of Spirit. At the Franciscans’ first general chapter, we are told, some in the community argued for greater economic practicality in their rule, and Francis moved to indignation said:

• ...Brothers, the Lord called me by the way of simplicity and humbleness, and this is the way He has pointed out to me for myself and for those who will believe and follow me... The Lord told me that He would have me poor and foolish in this world and that He willed not to lead us by any way other than that. May God confound you by your own wisdom and learning and, for all your fault-finding, send you back to your vocation whether you will or no.

In our own time, when Blessed Theresa of Calcutta used to send her Sisters shopping, she ordered them to buy the cheapest example of whatever they were seeking. Invariably, someone would object that to pay more would buy a better quality product that would last longer. Mother Theresa’s answer was always the same, "We have not taken a vow of economics; we have taken a vow of poverty."
Good capitalists (and economists will argue that we are all born capitalists) may decline to embrace St. Francis’ or Blessed Theresa’s moral completely, but their words teach us very clearly that Poverty of Spirit is an attitude by which we judge, value, use and desire the good things of the world.

The Example of the Blessed Virgin
In his True Devotion to Mary, St Louis de Montfort remarked, "I am speaking mainly for the poor and simple who have more good will and faith than the common run of scholars" (26). Economic poverty forces one to see the world in very real, life and death terms. Voluntary poverty, which is closely allied to humility, confers a similar clarity in which we see ourselves as we truly are in relation to God. When she utters the majestic words of her Magnificat, the Blessed Virgin turns her back on the very hint of false modesty. "All generations will call me blessed," she says, for he has "exalted the lowly." To be poor in spirit is to see all we are capable of because of God.

Poverty of Spirit & the Happiness of Activity
If we seek the world’s goods only for themselves we unreasonably look for a perfection on earth that we can only expect to find in heaven. If we use them so that our dealings with others are characterized by justice, we have achieved the happiness of activity and drawn closer to perfect happiness, because we have made the kingdom of this world a little more like the kingdom of heaven. And if we can school ourselves not to want more than we need, then we have discovered the happiness the saints enjoy in heaven because we have discovered that God is the only source of the excellence and abundance that will make us happy.

"Today" & "Tomorrow" in the Beatitudes
Here we should consider a third linguistic point in the beatitudes. The reward for blessedness is something we look forward to in the future, so Jesus appropriately uses the future tense to describe what we can anticipate. But he uses the present tense to describe the life-conditions and actions by which we are blessed. "Blessed are the poor in spirit... Blessed are the meek... Blessed are those who mourn." We can look forward to the perfection of happiness only in Christ’s kingdom, but if we are poor in spirit, or meek, or if we mourn now the blessing has already begun.
One of the early Church writers taught that Christ saved us by taking on our flesh and going through every moment of our lives, teaching us, by his example, how to act rightly when we had grown used to acting wrongly by following the example of our First Parents. Another early writer (Basil of Caesarea, 329 - 379), pointed out that the teaching in the beatitudes is always preceded by an action. Christ can urge us to Poverty of Spirit, he said, because,

• being rich by nature, since all the Father’s goods are his, he became poor on our account in order to enrich us by his poverty... it is he... who emptied himself, taking the form of a slave in order that we might receive gift for gift from his fullness.

The Beatitudes & The Eucharist - Gift & Challenge
We should consider the connection between what we are - and what we hope to be - and what we eat at the Mass. Every other food we consume is turned into us. But our faith tells us that "when we eat this bread and drink this cup" we become what we eat, and are transformed into the Body of Christ. This is at once a gift beyond any we might hope for, and a challenge to transform the world. In the life of Christians, gifts are never given simply to enrich the individual who receives them; they are given for the building up and the sanctification of the Church.
Not long ago, the retired Archbishop of San Francisco, speaking on the relation of moral life to moral law, said,

• The first question of Christian discipleship ... is not, What am I obliged to do or to avoid? The first question of the moral life is, What does it mean to me to be in Christ Jesus? What claim does being a new creation in Christ make on the way I live?

The Eucharist, then, is not only the focus of our worship, it is the first principle of our morality. Our former Holy Father makes explicit the connection between the Christian’s obligations in and to the world, and the Eucharistic food that equips us for these challenges. He said,

• A significant consequence of the eschatological tension inherent in the Eucharist, is ... the fact that it spurs us on our journey through history and plants a seed of living hope in our daily commitment to the work before us. Certainly the Christian vision leads to the expectation of "new heavens" and a "new earth" (Rev. 22:1), but this increases, rather than lessens, our sense of responsibility for the world today. I wish to reaffirm this forcefully... so that Christians will feel more obliged than ever not to neglect their duties as citizens of the world (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 20).

The Eucharist is blessing in the present, promise for the future, and strength for the journey. Christ became poor to teach us where we ought to look for wealth. The Eucharist is the point of connection that unites our hope for the future with beatitude here and now, by transforming us into the Christ who allowed himself to be transformed to look like us.

 

[dude1981]

THIS was a good read. Not sure if I believe in god or not, but this was still pretty interesting.Is there gonna be a part two?

 

[darleneonfire]

Thank you Sanctus, for what proved an interesting reflection on the Beatitudes. I'm assuming there will be further installments and I for one look forward to reading them!

 

[m_levesque]

Thank you Sanctus, for what proved an interesting reflection on the Beatitudes. I'm assuming there will be further installments and I for one look forward to reading them!

In my parish, the priest gave an excellent homily in which he spoke about the gospel passage on the beatitudes ... and tied it in with the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Basically, in the homily we were told that before Jesus came, we had the 10 Commandments to live by, which were mainly phrased in negative terms of "Thou Shalt Not." Then, at the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus preached the positive ... and at the same time far more demanding ... message of the beatitudes "Happy/Blessed Is He Who ... " The priest then went on to encourage us to progress in the uphill struggle of our spiritual growth. He used our attitude regarding Mass Attendance as one example: Do we do the bare minimum, or do we strive for more, as in truly appreciating that when we receive Communion we are receiving the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ?

 

[sanctus]

Thank you for the positive feedback. Yes, working on more and will share as they are finished;-)

 

[sanctus]

The Beatitudes, Part II


BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO MOURN, BLESSED ARE THE MEEK

By Father C. G. Vaillancourt

Personal and Scriptural Sorrow

And Jesus said, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."
Of the Beatitudes, this second is, perhaps, the most difficult to comprehend. Not because we do not understand what it means to be sad, but because the Scriptural understanding of sorrow evolved over time, and our personal understanding of sorrow has failed to keep up.
When Jesus promises a reward to those who mourn, we may think of the sorrow we feel when someone dies. But there is also a unique "Scriptural" sort of sorrow that has less to do with personal loss, than it does the pain and harm the community experiences as a result of sin or oppression. This collective sorrow is different from the personal sorrow experienced by an individual, so the blessing that rewards one type of sorrow is different from the blessing that rewards the other.


Personal Sorrow and the Cross

First, let us consider the value of personal sorrow. Obviously, we mourn when someone dies. At the time, we may not feel particularly holy, but the preface for the funeral Mass reminds us that "the sadness of grief gives way to the bright promise of immortality." These words are not only a promise of eternal life for those who die, they should also be a reminder of the blessing that comes to those who mourn.
At some point we have to be consoled by the thought that Jesus also mourned the death of a friend. The new Catechism of the Church reminds us that grace

• ...makes us ‘partakers of the divine nature’ and of eternal life. With beatitude, man enters into the glory of Christ.... (III.2.1721).

Human grief unites us with Christ, who wept at the death of Lazarus, so grief is one more of those things that refines the image of Christ in us.
That is the here and now reward of our sorrow. We cannot imagine what other forms the consolation for our grief will take, but there is a maxim in our faith that the Church believes as it prays. Our prayer over and over repeats the promise of reunion with those who have died, so we reasonably look forward to this reunion as one more consolation for our grief.


Collective or Spiritual Sorrow
Perfection & Sorrow for Sin

But what shall we say about communal or "Scriptural" sorrow, the grief we express when we ask forgiveness for sin? This is the sort of "mourning" the early Christian writers considered almost exclusively.
Here we may find it profitable to remember that St. Thomas Aquinas places the Beatitude of comfort for those who mourn among the blessings that remove the obstacle of sensual happiness. In the previous reflection, on the happiness Jesus promises to those who are poor, we remarked that sensual happiness comes from money, power, and distinction, as well as the more predictable sex, food - and any of the other created, material goods that insulate us from the pain of everyday life (S.T., I-II, 69.3,4). St. Thomas says that virtue, - that is, good habits - enables us to resist the lure of sensual happiness by using these things in moderation.
But if the Christian is striving for perfection, there is a goal higher than moderation. The Catechism says, the beatitude we are promised confronts us with decisive moral choices. It invites us to purify our hearts of bad instincts and to seek the love of God above all things (1723).
General Electric has a motto, "Good enough isn’t," and that is the point the Catechism makes. It is not enough for Christians to be good. God calls us to be perfect. Nor is it enough merely to "avoid evil." We must also "do good."
The Catechism reminds us that the highest good is seeking the love of God over everything else - even to the extent, Aquinas says, of "...cast[ing] them aside altogether; nay more, so that, if need be, [one] makes a deliberate choice of sorrow" (S.T., 69.3).
Created things are attractive, good, and reasonable. But they do not last. We can lose them, or fear that we will lose them. No matter how many things we have, or how excellent they are, if we find our happiness in created goods, we commit ourselves to an unending cycle of striving to gain something we cannot possess for long. St. Augustine reminds us that this is at best a fragile happiness, for "there [In the world's created goods] the mourner is comforted by things which make him fear lest he have to mourn again."
A 17th-Century Jesuit moralist, summed this up very elegantly - and also very frighteningly, "When nothing more is to be wished for, everything is to be feared... for where desire ends, apprehension begins." (Baltasar Gracian, "A Truthtelling Manual," 200).


Grace and Detachment

The saints tell us that the only thing that can make us happy is God, because God is the only thing we cannot lose. Therefore, the saints admonish us to cultivate a disdain for the material things that delight and console us, or at least to be aware that we own nothing in this world, so we must never expect a created thing to make us happy.
To be fair, St. Thomas Aquinas says that we do not reach this point of detachment by ourselves. Virtue will lead us as far as moderation, but if we are going to achieve heroic detachment, God must intervene in our lives by grace. The good news here is that if we do not achieve absolute detachment from created things, we are not altogether to blame. Nevertheless, beatitude is the result of choice, and seeking God’s love above all is the choice we always need to strive to make.
Here is where the sorrow we feel for personal loss can help us to understand the sorrow we ought to feel for our sins. St. John Chrysostom wrote,

• ...if those who grieve for children, or wife, or any other relation gone from them... if they aim not at glory, are not provoked by insults nor led captive by envy, nor beset by any other passion, their grief alone wholly possessing them; much more will they who mourn for their own sins, as they ought to mourn, show forth a self-denial greater than this.

Sorrow is the result of loss. The loss can be an event that befalls us accidentally, or it can be something we seek - as when we give up a legitimate pleasure for Lent, or try to break the habitual attachment to some sin. Whatever the cause of it, our sorrow is a point of connection between us and Christ’s cross. And when we make that connection we are consoled because sorrow is both a sign of the cross in our midst now, and a pledge of Christ’s love for the future - the only thing capable of satisfying us completely.


Meekness: the Corrective to Power

And Jesus said, "blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." If the Scripture confuses us in the second beatitude by employing a technical meaning for mourning, our language itself betrays us here by devaluing the virtue of meekness.
Meekness is one of those words we simply do not understand. We look at someone who stands off to the side and never expresses an opinion, and we say the person is meek. But that is to confuse meekness with shyness, and Jesus does not promise a reward for being shy. Meekness is altogether different from shyness, but it has a great deal in common with the poverty of spirit and the mourning that Jesus commends in the Beatitudes.


Getting What We Want

Thus far we have considered the relation between the Beatitudes and what St. Thomas Aquinas calls sensual happiness - a technical theological term that means following our own designs, or getting our own way. When we talk about getting our own way, we need to talk about the means by which we gain something we want.
We can pay for a good, which is where wealth comes in handy. Or we can choose from whatever comes along that makes us feel good, and here some cultivated sensibilities and good taste are useful. But there is a third way to get what we want, and that is force. "...cruel and pitiless men," Aquinas says,

• Seek by wrangling and fighting to destroy their enemies so as to gain security for themselves. Hence Our Lord promises the meek a secure and peaceful possession of the land of the living, whereby the solid reality of eternal goods is denoted (I-II, 69.4).

The Remedy of the Beatitudes

Poverty of spirit enables us to govern our desire for affluence, and mourning helps us overcome an attachment to the things that delight our senses. There is one more part to this picture, and meekness fills in the blank space.
Meekness is the virtue that moderates anger, which is a desire for vengeance. Thus, those who will inherit the earth are the same individuals who might very easily have taken it by force but who allow themselves to be restrained by the example of Christ who is meek and humble of heart.
When Jesus promised the earth to the meek he was undoubtedly identifying his own people, subject to foreign, pagan occupation. His words echo Psalm 37, in which,

• Yet a little while and the wicked shall be no more… but the meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity.

Meekness, Economics and Us

The apocalyptic rewards for patient endurance still inspire many individuals, and for the economically disadvantaged and the politically oppressed, the beatitudes are a strong and hopeful promise of redress. But for most of us living in the developed economic world circumstances are far different. For us to understand the blessing of meekness, we need to look at the world for just a moment from the point of view of the bullies.
St. Thomas says that "cruel and pitiless men seek by wrangling and fighting to destroy their enemies so as to gain security for themselves." Even if we are not talking about acres of land, who of us is not capable of wrangling and fighting until we get our way?
The goal is security, and meekness reminds us that we will not find security in the things we commonly wrangle and fight about. Either a better fighter will come along or if we get what we want by arguing, we feel so guilty we want to give it back.


The Beatitudes: a Sacramental Way of Life

When we were small we learned that sacraments are outward signs, instituted by Christ to give grace. This means that Jesus has chosen certain elements of our lives to go beyond whatever meaning they have in themselves to allow us to touch Him.
To be poor in spirit, to mourn, and to be meek is to cultivate a sacramental attitude toward creation - to find signs of the kingdom of heaven in the things that surround us, and to cultivate the attitudes toward the created world that will make us the ministers -here and now- of the life we look forward to enjoying fully in the future.

 

[sanctus]

The Beatitudes, Part III


Blessed Are They Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness

By Father C. G. Vaillancourt

And Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied."

The Call to Righteousness

The new Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches

• The beatitude we are promised confronts us with decisive moral choices. It invites us to purify our hearts of bad instincts and to seek the love of God above all else. It teaches us that true happiness is not found in riches or well-being, in human fame or power, or in any human achievement – however beneficial it may be – such as science, technology and art, or indeed in any creature, but in God alone, the source of every good and of all love (CCC 1723).

The first three beatitudes describe our relations with created things. They call us to reflect on what we want and how we get it. They remind us that although created goods (we commonly think of sex, power and money) may have immense immediate appeal, nothing but God will fully satisfy us, because only God is immense enough to fill our infinite longing, and God – being eternal – is the only possession that is not subject to the threat of loss or the whim of chance.


Personal Righteousness & Others

The next two beatitudes, hunger and thirst for righteousness, and mercy, confront us with moral choices in our relations to God and one another. St. Thomas Aquinas describes this as the happiness of "activity," the satisfaction we seek from a life with others in the world. He tells us that this happiness – which we enjoy here and now – disposes us, or sets us up, for future happiness in heaven (I-II.69.3). The foundation for this happiness is justice.
When we think of justice we often conjure images drawn from law and order television shows, in which an individual wields a gavel, the thunder of which determines the fate of one or more individuals. Justice, according to Aristotle, is something broader and more general. It is "the perpetual and constant will to render each one his right," (Ethics viii. 11). Each of these words is important, but St. Thomas summarizes them very neatly by remarking that justice is something that concerns our dealings with others (II-II.58.2). Therefore – although we might not think of it very often – justice includes our dealings with God.


Justice & the Path to God

Someone has said that justice is the first virtue we learn. We may not have the vocabulary to describe the virtue, but we do not have to be very old to know whether we have been treated fairly in a transaction. This observation is so true that it may be hard to get beyond it when we think about justice. For example, when we think of justice between us and our neighbor, we may think primarily of what others owe us. When we think of the justice that governs God and us, we may be used to thinking only of the righteousness of God’s judgement that we may (or may not) look forward to when we die.
This, however, is a self-centredness that we must abandon if we are truly to grow in the virtue of justice. If we do not expand our notion of justice, we are in danger of forgetting that the point of justice is our relations with others, not necessarily theirs with us. Worse, we may forget that the purpose of justice – like any virtue – is to help us become like God. (CCC 1803).


Justice & Prayer

Long practice may have taught us to think of prayer as the primary means by which we ask God for what we need or want. While this is true, this, too, is a self-centred attitude that obscures the nature of prayer as an act of justice – an act by which we give God, through our worship, that which is His due. St. John Vianney, the great 19th Century patron of the parish clergy, speaks of prayer as “a task,” but this term does not mean that prayer is drudgery, to be undertaken under duress or merely endured with patience.
In his Catechetical Instruction, St. John Vianney teaches

• prayer is nothing else than union with God… in this intimate union God and the soul are like two pieces of wax moulded into one; they cannot any more be separated.

In our life of prayer we become like God by surrendering our wills to God’s and allowing ourselves to do as God commands us.
The saint continues, "My children, your hearts are small, but prayer enlarges them and renders them capable of loving God. Prayer is a foretaste of heaven." We are used to accomplishing our goals by self-reliance; the mysterious union of justice and prayer allows us to achieve far more – and by doing nothing more than God’s grace urges us to do as God’s creatures.


The Habit of Justice

The Catechism teaches that

• Human virtues acquired by education, by deliberate acts and by perseverance in repeated efforts are purified and elevated by divine grace. With God’s help they forge character and give facility to the practice of the good (CCC 1810).

This makes an important point that can easily be overlooked. And that is the connection between what we can be expected to do and what we can only hope to do with God’s grace. The virtues are good habits, and – like any habit – they increase the ease with which we do something. With practice the virtues make it easy for us to do good, and they can take us quite far; God’s gift of grace, however, can elevate these habits into something more.


Grace & the Hunger for Justice

In the previous reflection on mourning, we discovered that habits of moderation can teach us how to use created things wisely. Grace can allow us more and more to give up our dependence on them, until we are able, finally, to turn our backs on them. This describes our progress in justice as well. As human being we must school ourselves to treat others fairly – that is no more than God has the right to expect of beings created in his likeness – but St. Thomas talks about a justice elevated by grace, in which

• We do the same thing much more heartily, by accomplishing works of justice with an ardent desire, even as a hungry and thirsty man eats and drinks with eager appetite. (II-II 69.3)

In his homily on the Sermon on the Mount, St. Augustine asks his hearers to notice that "…in each case hath every duty its appropriate reward: and nothing is introduced in the reward which doth not suit the precept." Now this may seem obvious, but Augustine points out that

• if the remedy which is applied to the wound heal it, there is no more pain; but that which is applied against hunger, food…, is so applied as to give relief only for a little while….The remedy of fullness is applied day after day, yet the wound of weakness is not healed. Let us therefore “hunger after righteousness, that we may be filled” .... Let our inner man then hunger and thirst, for it hath its own proper meat and drink."
  
  Grace Increases Our Hunger for Justice
  
  The first of the Lenten prefaces for the Mass reminds us that the purpose of the forty days is to "give us a spirit of loving reverence" for God, "and of willing service to our neighbor." This doesn’t sound much like hungering and thirsting, but imagine how dull these words would sound if we left out the modifiers "loving" and willing". Then the preface would say "You give us a spirit of reverence for you, our Father, and of service to our neighbour." That is no more than God and our neighbour deserve, so there is no question we would be acting justly if that is all we were to give. But the beatitude asks us to strive for something more.
  St. John Chrysostom, whose name means "Golden Mouth" was bishop of Constantinople in the 4th Century. He used his considerable powers in the pulpit against everyone and everything he found fault with – and he had plenty to find fault with. His enemies finally succeeded in sending him into exile, where he died in 407, but he left behind some remarkable sermons, including one on the beatitudes. When he gets to hungering and thirsting for righteousness, he says
  • …see with what exceeding force He puts it. For He says not "Blessed are they which keep fast by righteousness," but "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness:" that not merely anyhow, but with all desire we may pursue it.
    
    
  Hunger in the Midst of Plenty
  
  Looking around at the vast array of food outlets we may question whether much of the food and drink is particularly wholesome, but the availability of so much – whatever the nutritional value – means that hunger and thirst, for most of us, are fairly abstract concepts.
  John Chrysostom challenges us to lay aside these abstractions. He makes a brilliant distinction between fasting – in which we hunger because we have given up what we do not need – and true hunger, in which we will settle for anything. And he tells us that our desire for righteousness must be like that of a person who is starving for food.
  We may not often feel this way about justice, so God has made the reward particularly attractive. It reminds us of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman, to whom He says, "anyone who drinks the water I shall give will never be 0thirsty again."
  
  A Reward to Fit our Action
  
  Jesus told his disciples,
  • If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would have his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it (Mt. 16.25).
  Like many of Jesus’ words, these are both mysterious and frightening. Jesus’ own example, however, shows us that they can be carried out, and the virtue of justice is one of the means by which we do so.
  The beatitude lures us into sympathy with others by promising us what St. Thomas describes as a reward "…in correspondence with the motives for which men recede from it." God is a superb psychologist, and to make us want to think of others, He promises satisfaction, which the dictionary defines as "fulfillment, gratification, contentment."
  
  The Abundance Promised by Justice
  
  The popular "Hymn of St. Francis" sums up very poetically what we have been considering. It says, "Make me a channel of your peace… it is in pardoning that we are pardoned. In giving to all men that we receive, and in dying that we’re born to eternal life." Left to ourselves and unaided by grace, we may look at the world and what it offers as something that economists call a "zero sum game." This presupposes a limit to any good (including happiness). According to this view, the happiness of others represents a loss to us, because the happiness that others enjoy is happiness that might have been ours. Christ’s promise that those who hunger after righteousness will be satisfied overturns this "conventional wisdom," and the satisfaction of justice lays to rest the fear that by reaching out to others we may lose something that belongs by right to us.

 

[AndyF]

When we think of the justice that governs God and us, we may be used to thinking only of the righteousness of God’s judgement that we may (or may not) look forward to when we die.

This, however, is a self-centredness that we must abandon if we are truly to grow in the virtue of justice.

A being can only claim virtue if he applies it's purest precepts, and that is every being without exception. There should be an overriding governance of principle of justice every being abides by. The principle of justice should exist prior to it's use, or the user can create it if he is able perfect it prior to it's use. A justice proven to be tainted or who's mechanism or process is kept from those who it applies to should be retracted until the cause or defect is removed. A justice should never be a black box.

Every justice is open to scrutiny of those it applies to, and that includes it's mechanisms and processes visually evident. This concept of justice was in full acceptance when the Holy Spirit entered in covenant with man, therefore made bound in heaven. Trust becomes detested by those who wish to cover up injustices. True justice has nothing to hide and does not hesitate to present evidence of this on request and takes no personal exception to the request, nor is it put at risk by doing so.

self-centerdness

Lets be realistic. The guy down the street has a knife in his pocket and says there is a possibility I may get stabbed one day, and he says he has done it many times, and I should be afraid of him, but I'm being self-centered about my concern for his justice to me.

I think a valid occasion for the concern of justice could arise in a situation where a being just comes into existance and becomes self aware. Before he could utter his first word he discovers something was expected of him for simply being, and is told there is a possibility he will need to suffer consequences for his actions, that the creator is to be feared, then that may logically prompt the first question which could be a reasonable "Do I exist in a world of true justice?" The motive being self preservation and concern for his well being, not at all relevant to anyone else or some ulterior motive. He may venture innocently on a quest that may take a lifetime to determine if he does indeed exist in a world of true justice. All this is reasonable.

If we do not expand our notion of justice, we are in danger of forgetting that the point of justice is our relations with others

Ourselves taken from our own perspective also. If one found himself through catastrophy to be alone in the world, justice would not disappear because there is no other. Conscience guides the other "self" as well and he is still accountable for his effects on creation. There is also remaining the question of justice to those in authority who apply justice, as this is also an action to be judged, otherwise injustice would go unpaid.

AndyF

 

[AndyF]

sanctus:

Prayer

You will note there seems to be no area of Faith that is not open to some sort of critcism from the Church. One of the thorns of Christanity is that nothing a person does seems to be off limits to being chided for being deficient. Christianity needs to provide room for timeout.

This timeout should be prayer. When one enters into prayer, the context should be the only thing relevant. When we enter discussion with a loved one, that person doesn't bring a clip board to assess how a thing was said, or how a person postured, or where he converses from,etc. Too much emphasis is placed on religious protocol, and at least prayer should be off bounds to critcism, after all he is at least conversing.

AndyF

 

[tanakar]

sanctus:

Prayer

You will note there seems to be no area of Faith that is not open to some sort of critcism from the Church. One of the thorns of Christanity is that nothing a person does seems to be off limits to being chided for being deficient. Christianity needs to provide room for timeout.

This timeout should be prayer. When one enters into prayer, the context should be the only thing relevant. When we enter discussion with a loved one, that person doesn't bring a clip board to assess how a thing was said, or how a person postured, or where he converses from,etc. Too much emphasis is placed on religious protocol, and at least prayer should be off bounds to critcism, after all he is at least conversing.

AndyF

Where did this sanctus say prayer is wrong? Did I miss something?

 

[AndyF]

sanctus:

...in this world, as often as we run into these men [whom we have helped] we will derive great pleasure from meeting them, because we will recall the good turn we did them. When we see them in the next world, before the dread tribunal of judgement, we will experience a great confidence. When the unjust, the greedy, the plunderers... go before this tribunal and see their victims... they will not be able to open their mouths or to say a word in their own defense...

(Discourse VII).

It is admirable the Saint attempts to address the universal justice system in a restrictive way, because he has no proof other than a promise that Devine Justice is being applied fairly, and he is doing his best with what he has. He assumes the individual will only be concerned and restrict himself with justice he applied to other individuals, and judgement of others to him. It does not occur to him that he may request councel and case files and all the trappings of justice. (It is not surprising either, as these were not privledges to citzens in antiquity, but they are now). There is a broader context that is even visual today on this planet, and we cannot enter into it's aspects if we are going to be squemish.

The justice being applied to the subject here is only the last phase of his trial, and man should insist that this is so, and so should every other man in fraternal caring. The initial task in phase I is to make evident the proof of pure justice is being applied to all entities, and in phase II the proof the system is pure in itself. This is true today where in our conceptually pure justice (sanctioned by the Holy Spirit on that fateful Pentecostal day), an offender sees in perspective justice being applied to others as well as proof the system works without error.

On earth while living he enters his earthly court house, he has seen earthly phase I and II in action having lived through cases of others, having seen the mechanism of justice being applied to others and their sentences, even the cases of those who claim innocence after sentencing. It is now his turn, but now as he enters his social edifice for his own phase III, he at least has seen examples of his fallible justice system being applied. When he dies, he hopes the process will be the same.

I could understand only one reason for the hasty dispatches of individuals in a celestial trial, and the closed one on one judgements to them. That is due to the existance of immunity to complete sentencing to some entities. I say "complete" because they do receive temporal punishments as partial payment as we all do, but that is not what is at issue. This is the only situation in my Faith where I think trust cannot be assumed to satisfy. I'm not saying it does not exist, I'm saying there is no evidenciary proof it exists, and this is one aspect of our faith where taking for granted the "black box" is doing it's job just doesn't cut it.

Devine rule makes the evidence of justice optional and reveals it only to those who deserve reward to know. I disagree. Evidenciary justice goes part and parcel with creation of beings, and it is an absolute(see?, no relativism here) outside the Deposit of the Faith. If one day we can create aware machines, this will be brought home to reality when they too will want reassurance a justice is already in place, and it will be their right to have it and see it being played out in front of them.

Maybe I'm being gun shy at the prospect of one being deciding my fate for eternity, and that is due to seeing so called "just individuals" apply somewhat questionable extreme sentences on other defenseless people, so I'm uneasy with the idea. Neither do I put myself in a self righteous situation or hold back my own guilt. I'm my worst critic. But some things are just too much to ask any individual, and I question if God really understands His creation. Perhaps He doesn't, and this is why this precept is part of the test.

I don't know about you folks, but no one-on-one for me. I'm going to my celestial trial briefcase in hand. I'll ask for a court appointed counsel without conflict of interest, (difficult in an atmosphere where every one is at their upmost behaviour, self preservation a top priority. ) to present my case. I'll bring up the cases such sodom.vs.God and other "quirks" of justice. You'll be able to hear a pin drop as everyone there drops their eyes to the floor. If I don't make it at least everyone will now have a justice exposed and the celestial realm won't be the same ever again. I can be excused if only for being Irish/French/English. :happy11:

Sorry for the length. Hard for me to be clear in short one liners.

AndyF

 

[m_levesque]

There is, on the surface, such a simplicity to the Beatitudes.But I am guessing to actually incorporate them into one's being is much more difficult than it would seem.

 

[AndyF]

There is, on the surface, such a simplicity to the Beatitudes.But I am guessing to actually incorporate them into one's being is much more difficult than it would seem.

Yes. But that is only reasonable. Given you have just entered a country and told they have a justice system where people enter one door and come out the back destined to one or two places, I'm sure you will gather your family to climb the gang plank and try another country.

Our behaviour is only one element of our interaction and significance in this world. We need to touch on relational behavior, and that includes relations of every being to each other. On the judicial topic my experience is limited to what I am exposed to and what I learn. I've seen tyrants administer justice. I've see authoritive individuals administer unbiased justice. I've seen justice take a back seat to ensuring societies get special favor. I've seen cases where the same factors being equal, an individual gets full measure applied. I'm of open mind, and this is one where I'll believe it when I see it.

AndyF

 

[AndyF]

Where did this sanctus say prayer is wrong?

Nowhere. I was trying to make a point that the Church makes too much out of formality and procedure in prayer.

AndyF

 

[darleneonfire]

Nowhere. I was trying to make a point that the Church makes too much out of formality and procedure in prayer.

AndyF

Don't they just do that in areas of corporate worship, like Holy Communion? Hope you don't mind an Anglican jumping in on you!

 

[sanctus]

The Beatitudes, Part IV


Blessed Are The Merciful for They Shall Obtain Mercy

By Father C G. Vaillancourt.

And Jesus said, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."
In the fourth beatitude Jesus says that those who hunger and thirst for justice will be satisfied. Hunger and thirst are almost certainly not the first things we think of when we consider our obligation to treat others justly. And that may be why God has made the reward so complete and so attractive. If He offered less than the promise of fullness of justice to us, we might be far less inclined to seek it passionately for others.
The Lure of the Beatitudes

God is a superb psychologist. He knows that we hesitate to reach out to others because we fear that by doing so we may lose something that belongs to us. Thus, the beatitudes lure us into sympathy with others by promising what St. Thomas describes as a reward, "... in correspondence with the motives for which men recede from" doing some good work.
St. Thomas makes the same point regarding the next beatitude, saying,

• Some, again, recede from works of mercy, lest they be busied with other people’s misery. Hence Our Lord promised the merciful that they should obtain mercy and be delivered from all misery.

Mercy is one of those words that, these days, has nearly lost its meaning. It means compassionate sorrow for another’s distress coupled with the practical will to do something about it. Tears alone do not make us merciful - we are not being merciful when we cry at a movie. To be merciful, our sorrow has to be expressed in some positive action.
The Catechism tells us,

• The works of mercy are charitable actions by which we come to the aid of our neighbor in his spiritual and bodily necessities. Instructing, advising, consoling, and comforting are spiritual works of mercy, as are forgiving and bearing wrongs patiently. The corporal works of mercy consist especially in feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and burying the dead (CCC 2447).

Once we rescue mercy from the sugar coating under which it so often struggles, we see very clearly that it is a very demanding enterprise. St. John Chrysostom says - and the simple clarity of his words help explain why he became unpopular at the Imperial Court in Constantinople - "Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs."

The Witness of the Fathers

St. Gregory the Great is usually quite moderate, but on this point he, too, is quite severe. He says,

• Those who neither desire what belongs to others nor bestow what is their own are to be admonished to consider carefully that the earth out of which they are taken is common to all... Vainly, then, do those suppose themselves innocent, who claim to their own private use the common gift of God; those who, in not parting with what they have received, walk in the midst of the slaughter of their neighbours... For when we administer necessaries of any kind to the indigent, we do not bestow our own, but render them what is theirs; we rather pay a debt of justice than accomplish works of mercy (Pastoral Rule, III. 21).

Taking up the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, Gregory says,

• ... the rich man in the Gospel who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and feasted sumptuously every day, is not said to have seized what belonged to others, but to have used what was his own unfruitfully; and avenging hell received him after this life, not because he did anything unlawful but because by immoderate indulgence he gave up his whole self to what was lawful (Ibid.).

St. Augustine reminds us that we stand in the same relation to God that those in need stand to us.

• ... thou art at once in abundance and in want - in abundance of temporal things and in want of things eternal. The man whom thou hearest is a beggar, and thou art thyself God’s beggar. Petition is made to thee, and thou makest thy petition... Thou art at once full and empty; fill the empty with thy fullness, that thy emptiness may be filled with the fullness of God.

Becoming God-like through Mercy

Eternal life with God is the goal of our life as Christians. The invitation to show God’s mercy to God’s creatures is an invitation to refine the image of God in us - which is why St. Thomas Aquinas can say that the happiness of an active life, which is a life of fair and compassionate dealing with those around us - prepares us here on earth for everlasting life in heaven.
In his sermon on the beatitudes, St. Leo the Great put this very succinctly.

• Recognize, Christian... what rewards thou art called, and by what methods of discipline thou must attain thereto. Mercy wishes thee to be merciful, righteousness to be righteous, that the Creator may be seen in His creature, and the image of God may be reflected in the mirror of the human heart expressed by the lines of imitation (XCV.A, vii).

In our life as Christians, God’s Spirit continually challenges and invites us to look at the world around us and see signs of our future glory in heaven. Our practice of justice and mercy allows us to glimpse a future in which everyone is perfectly satisfied.


Mercy and the Eucharist

This is the sacramental characteristic of our worship as well, and our late Holy Father, John Paul II reminded us that while the Eucharist is

• a straining toward a goal, a foretaste of joy promised by Christ (cf. Jn. 15:11)…Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life; they already possess it on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness... (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 18).

Pope John Paul calls this "the eschatological tension" in which the Church’s prayer on earth "reinforces our communion with the Church in heaven" (Ibid., 19). The Eucharist is the source of our virtuous behavior, so it should not surprise us that when we perform deeds of mercy and justice we touch the world, here and now, with a sign of God’s love.
But we also touch the world with God’s power. The opening prayer for one of the Sundays in Ordinary Time begins, "Father, you show your almighty power in your mercy and forgiveness...."

To Touch the World with God’s Power

We ordinarily consider God’s power in terms of creation, curing the sick, and raising the dead. Of the works of mercy, most of us could probably name feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, sheltering the homeless and clothing the naked. We may need to be reminded that also among the works of mercy is forgiveness.
Married couples participate in God’s act of creation, but none of us brings something into existence from nothing. None of us can raise the dead. But each of us can forgive. Almsgiving requires money, instruction requires particular knowledge, feeding, clothing and sheltering require specific material goods to give away or share. Each of these requirements sets a limit on the mercy we can offer, but the only limit to forgiveness is the limit we place on love.


A Voice from the Recent Past

Fr. Paul Duffner summed this up very eloquently. He said,

• Forgiveness is the one type of alms we can always give. It is a form of charity that can be exercised at any time by any one, be he rich or poor, young or old, sick or healthy. If we cannot manage this type of almsgiving, our poverty is much greater than being in want of money, food, clothing, or shelter.

When Matthew records Jesus’ great Sermon on the Mount he places Jesus in a huge crowd. But although everyone present must have been able to hear him, Matthew tells us that Jesus spoke to his disciples, with whom we are called to identify ourselves.
The words "disciple" and "discipline" come from the same root, a word that means "learner," so those whom Jesus directs his words to are those who had already begun to submit to his teaching, although Matthew tells us, their training began only a short time before.
Jesus addressed this message to his disciples precisely because he could not expect anyone to embrace it who had not already surrendered to grace and begun to follow him. The important words here are "surrendered" and "begun." The perfection Jesus demands of his disciples is a lifetime achievement rewarded only in another world, and our surrender to discipleship is the first step, not the last. This first step is necessarily uncertain.


The World Still Waits for Mercy

St. Matthew does not tell us this, but I think we can imagine that the crowd who heard Jesus stuck around to see how the disciples would respond. Two thousand years later the world understandably wonders how we - having heard these words in our day - are also going to respond.
To be merciful demands sacrifice, at least the sacrifice of forgiveness, and that may make it the most costly of the works our Savior asks us to undertake. The old admonition before marriage reminded us that the sacrifice essential to our salvation is usually "difficult and irksome." So, unfortunately, is trust. To obtain mercy means giving it. It also means placing ourselves altogether in the hands of a being we cannot see and whose ways are frequently anything but clear.


Mercy and Penance

To live this beatitude is to find ourselves at the heart of the penance the Church calls us to embrace and practice. Traditional penitential practices are prayer, fasting, and works of mercy. Another of the early Church theologians, St. Peter Chrysologus, preaches that this is not a multiple-choice menu. Our faith is a "both - and" proposition, so St. Peter says we must practice all three of these works, for,

• These three are one, and they give life to each other....If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others you open God’s ear to yourself (Sermon 43).

We Set the Standard for Mercy

God provides the model and the example for our actions, but we set the standards by which God’s love touches the world. And the gospel reminds us over and over that if the standard of our dealings with others is not particularly generous, then we should not expect God to be generous with us. In this regard, the Lord’s Prayer contains some of the most frightening words we can say - "forgive us as we forgive others."
The English language contains something like half a million words, but the scariest of them is one of the smallest, "as." "As" means "in the same way" or "to the extent that," and it is terrifying to consider that we tell God every day that we want Him to be merciful to us in the same way, or to the extent that we are merciful to others. St. Peter goes on,

• Offer your soul to God, make him an oblation of your fasting, so that your soul may be a pure offering, a holy sacrifice, a living victim... whoever fails to give this to God will not be excused, for if you are to give him yourself, you are never without the means of giving.

This brings us back to Fr. Duffner’s words. The only limit to mercy is the limit we place on our love. God has given us a great deal, and He reasonably expects a return on His investment. "Give to the poor," St. Peter Chrysologus says, "and you give to yourself. You will not be allowed to keep what you have refused to give others."

 

[sanctus]

The Beatitudes, Part V


Blessed are the Pure of Heart

By Father C.G.Vaillancourt

And Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God." The word "heart" occurs about a thousand times in the works of Shakespeare. The Bible uses the word "heart" 865 times, but that is the unmodified noun. There are separate listings for "brokenhearted," "faint hearted," "hard hearted," "merry hearted," "stiff hearted," "stout hearted," and "tender hearted."
The word "heart" occurs frequently in our literature because our hearts are important things. They represent what is most valuable in us, and they tell us what we value most in the world. Where we find our treasure, Jesus says, there we will find our hearts. This may sound commonplace, but it can be a rather frightening thought when we consider some of the things that make our hearts beat faster.


The Devaluation of the Heart

We have done two things with our hearts, and neither is particularly helpful for our spiritual life. On the one hand, the advances and sharing of scientific knowledge have allowed even the least medically-minded of us to become quite technical. In many ways, we have schooled ourselves to view the heart as the all-important source of our physical health. On the other hand, we have sentimentalized the heart and localized it as the site of our emotional life.
Each of these views is imperfect – not in the sense that it is bad, but in the sense that it is incomplete. In the Scripture, the heart is much more than we commonly acknowledge. The Scriptural writers may or may not have thought of the heart as a physical organ without which we cannot live. There is no question, though, that they believed it to be the place where we find our will, our thought, and our emotions. To be pure "in heart," then, is to be pure in every important aspect of our being. Not surprisingly, God promises a blessing to the pure in heart because they seek to be faithful in all ways. Jesus began His Sermon on the Mount by promising a reward to the poor in spirit. This part of his sermon draws to a close with a reward for purity of heart.


The Heart’s True Value

As we reflect on the beatitudes, we must be very careful when we consider Jesus’ use of the words poverty, purity, spirit and heart. We must not take Jesus so literally that we think of the heart as nothing but a physical organ, and poverty no more than economic disadvantage.
On the other hand, we must avoid making our hearts and our spirits no more than isolated symbols, arguing that so long as we keep our spirits poor and our hearts pure the rest of us will take care of itself. It is not easy to keep our hearts pure if that is the only part of our lives where purity counts, and from the prophet Zephaniah on, the Scripture is very clear that those who are materially poor have a special claim on God’s attention.
Our faith is a "both - and" proposition, so the beatitudes call us to remember those who are disadvantaged and to value at their true worth all those gifts and qualities that make us who we are and have such a profound effect on our happiness. At some point, we must allow the beatitudes to call us to humility - which is not slinking along walls and beating ourselves up - but acknowledging God as the source of everything we have and everything we are.


An Example from the Catechism

The new Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that purity of heart

• …refers to those who have attuned their intellects and wills to the demands of God’s holiness, chiefly on three areas: charity, chastity or sexual rectitude; love of truth and orthodoxy of faith (CC 2518).

It goes on to say that Baptism purifies us by washing away sin. But Baptism does not immunize us from life in a world that quantifies individuals, and determines a person’s worth based on physical appearance.
Purity of heart prompts the chastity that allows us to see one another as "neighbors," not as prey. Without calling us to ignore or deny any of our physical charm, purity of heart also inspires us to regard and value ourselves at our true worth, as God’s creation, and - to borrow a word from our youth - as temples of His spirit.
In this regard, purity of heart is closely allied with the virtue of Temperance. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that

• …the most natural operations are those which preserve the nature of the individual by means of meat and drink, and the nature of the species by the union of the sexes. Hence temperance is properly about pleasures of [taste] and sexual pleasures (II-II, 141,4).

Purity of heart denies none of the legitimate attractions that draw us toward one another, or the pleasures God provides in food and drink. Purity of heart enables us to distinguish between the gift and the giver, and to see the things God has given us as something more than momentary delights.


Purity of Heart & Charity

But purity of heart is more than chastity or temperance. It is also allied with the virtue of charity. In his first epistle, the evangelist John reminds us that true love does not mean "that we loved God, but that he loved us" (1 Jn. 3:10). The motion of charity begins and ends with God.
God loves us, and this enables us to love God in return. Once we love God, His love more and more enables us to love creation as He Himself loves it. This begins with an authentic love for ourselves, as God’s creatures. As we grow in God’s love, we are able to love other individuals - and the world itself - disinterestedly. This means we love them benevolently, not for the benefit they confer on us, but for the good we can do them simply because they (like all God’s creatures) are lovable.


The Summit of Charity

And Jesus promises us still more. At the Last Supper he tells his disciples, "no longer do I call you servants, but friends" (Jn. 15:15). Charity is an invitation to bridge the infinite gap between us and God, and to share God’s own happiness - not remotely and impersonally, but with the same unaffected, natural ease that characterizes our other friendships.
This is an overwhelming gift, but it in no way diminishes us. Rather, Charity perfects us and enables us to grow into the heroic beings we desire to be. Charity enlightens our eyes and refines our hearts, but we continue to see with our own eyes, and to love with our own hearts. Our love for God will be reflected in our love for God’s creatures, but although we touch the world with God’s love, we continue to leave behind our own fingerprints.


Purity of Heart & Faith

Purity of heart is also aligned with a love of truth by which, St. Augustine tells us, we come to understand what we profess in faith.
The faithful must believe the articles of the Creed "so that by believing they may obey God, by obeying may live well, by living well may purify their hearts, and with pure hearts may understand what they believe."
Faith challenges us to believe something simply because God commands us to do so. This may be a trial, and we may have a world of reasons for wanting to believe otherwise, but St. Augustine assures us that faith becomes easier - and our motives purer - the more willing we are to surrender, in faith, to God.


Purity of Heart & Clarity of Vision

If we were to choose one sense to describe what purity of heart is all about, it would unquestionably be the sense of sight. Purity of heart is a clarity of moral vision that allows us to see God and the world as God Himself sees them. The reward for purity of heart, appropriately, is "to see God." But the reward doesn’t stop with seeing God - although that alone would be quite a reward.
In the prayers of the Funeral Mass we say,

• Welcome into your kingdom our departed brothers and sisters…There [in your kingdom] we hope to share in your glory…On that day we shall see you, our God, as you are.

To see God as He is will be no small gift, but the words that come next are astounding. "We shall become like you and praise you forever through Christ our Lord…." In heaven, we shall become like God because we shall see God. Jesus’ words will come true: we shall find our hearts where we have found our treasure, and the magnificence of the treasure will transform our hearts.


An Example from Our Childhood

This is one of those truths we learn as children, but may forget or ignore as we grow older. In the fairy tales we hear in our youth, the heroes and heroines are frequently cautioned against looking at something that will turn them to stone or otherwise harm them. The Scripture tells us our First Parents faced a similar challenge in the Garden. They looked away from their true treasure for just a moment, and the appearance of the human heart was changed forever.


The Example of Mary

The late Pontiff, John Paul II, wrote a magnificent reflection on the Rosary, and in this encyclical letter (Rosarium Virginis Mariae) he calls us to follow the example of Mary by fixing our gaze on Christ.

• The eyes of her heart already turned to him at the Annunciation, when she conceived him by the power of the Holy Spirit… when at last she gave birth to him in Bethlehem, her eyes were able to gaze tenderly on the face of her son… Thereafter Mary’s gaze…would never leave him. At times it would be a questioning look… [but] it would always be a penetrating gaze, one capable of deeply understanding Jesus, even to the point of perceiving his hidden feelings and anticipating his decisions, as at Cana. At other times it would be a look of sorrow, especially beneath the cross… On the morning of Easter hers would be a gaze radiant with joy… and finally, on the day of Pentecost, a gaze afire with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Purity of Heart & The Eucharist

In his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 11: 23-25), St. Paul gives us what is probably the earliest description of the Last Supper. He describes Jesus’ actions and words, and says, "…as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes" (11:26). This tells us that our sacramental life now connects us to the saving events of the past and prepares us for something we look forward to in the future.
When we approach the altar for communion we stand at the foot of the cross, with all its awe, all its terror, and all its power. At the same time, the food and drink we share at the Mass commands us to look forward to another meal, the everlasting banquet Jesus has prepared for us in heaven. The Eucharist we share today readies us for the union with Christ we hope to enjoy tomorrow.
In the same way, cultivating purity of heart prepares us for the day when we will possess all our heart longs for. In heaven we look forward to seeing God. Purity of heart enables us to see "according to God," and to find Him wherever we turn. The world, our bodies, and the many qualities we find attractive in the individuals who surround us are all manifestations of God’s infinite love and imagination. The more we cultivate a purity of heart in our relations with God’s creatures, the more clearly we come to see God in them. Increasing the clarity of our vision on earth prepares us to enjoy the everlasting vision of His glory that God promises we will enjoy in heaven.

 

[sanctus]

The Beatitudes, Part VI


Blessed are the Peacemakers

By Father C G. Vaillancourt

And Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

Peace & Political Reality

Peace, like mercy, is one of those words we use all the time, perhaps without thinking too much about it. Pope Paul VI once remarked that peace can be defined negatively as "the absence of war," which sadly suggests that peace is the exception to the more common experience of warfare. In our modern world we are surrounded by imperfect treaties crafted to secure this kind of peace.
These treaties are without doubt the best deals their negotiators could frame, but the shifting allegiances we have witnessed since September of 2001 are a testimony to the world’s very dim understanding of peace - and a very good reason for Jesus to offer an alternative vision of what St. Teresa of Avila calls "...the ineffable joy which one receives together with many other blessings in the kingdom of heaven."

A Theological Alternative

Our theology tells us that peace is a state of tranquility between persons or within oneself. Its basis is the virtue of charity, in which all desire is united in a desire for God. The beatitudes describe our relations with created things and with other people, and they remind us that virtue, like sin, has social consequences. We may rejoice in personal peace, but peace does not end with us. A modern religious song prays, "let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me."
These words describe the movement of peace from the individual into the world, from our personal enjoyment of a blessing to its global potential. Peace has a social dimension because God commands us to love one another as we love ourselves, which means fulfilling to some extent the will of our neighbour as if it were our own.


Peace & Purity of Heart

There is a wonderful balance between the blessing promised peacemakers and the reward for purity of heart that we considered in our last reflection. Purity of heart is the gift by which we are perfected in ourselves - what St. Thomas calls "...the cleansing of man’s heart so that it is not defiled by the passions" (I-II. 69.3). By contrast, to be a peacemaker is to cooperate with grace in our relations with one another. When he preaches on this beatitude, St. John Chrysostom says

• Here Christ not only takes away altogether our own strife and hatred among ourselves, but He requires besides this something more, namely, that we should set others at one again, who are at strife (Hom. XV. 7).

Our theology employs a descriptive expression, bonum diffisivum sui, to describe this movement from the individual to others. The Latin means, "a good that diffuses itself," or "spreads itself around." Some gifts are too good to keep to ourselves; peace is one of them.


Peace & the Mass

To share the Eucharist is the high point of our life as God’s people on earth. Everything else we eat is transformed to become a part of us, but our communion transforms us into what we eat, and we become what we celebrate at Mass: the Body of Christ. Not surprisingly, then, the personal and global dimensions of peace intersect in the liturgy.
Just after we say the Lord’s Prayer, we hear the words "Lord, Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles, ‘I leave you peace, my peace I give you’... give us the peace and unity of your kingdom." The emphasis here should be on Christ’s saying "My" peace, and as we count up our nation’s allies and enemies around the globe, the distinction between Christ’s peace and the world’s should be very clear.
In his letter "On the Eucharist in Its Relationship to the Church," Pope John Paul speaks of the Church - here the former Holy Father refers to us - as "a sacrament for humanity... for the redemption of all."

• From the perpetuation of the sacrifice of the cross and her communion with the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, the church draws the spiritual power needed to carry her mission. The Eucharist thus appears as both the source and the summit of all evangelization, since its goal is the communion of mankind with Christ and in him with the Father and the Holy Spirit (22).

Peace & Contemplation

Our purity of heart and our peace may be perfect or imperfect, but to the extent we cultivate and enjoy these gifts at all, our happiness is what theologians call the happiness of contemplation, in which St. Teresa says, "the soul is no longer preoccupied in any way about the things of earth, for it finds peace and glory within itself."
We may think, appropriately, of contemplatives as individuals who choose to withdraw from the world to devote themselves completely to prayer. But this does not mean that only those who embrace a cloistered life can experience the joys of contemplation. Our purity of heart and our peace may be perfect or imperfect, but to the extent we cultivate and enjoy these gifts at all, our happiness is the happiness of contemplation.


An Example from the Saints

Nor does the pursuit of contemplation mean that those who choose an enclosed existence divorce themselves from a care for the world. St. Therese of Lisieux, who entered the cloister at the age of fifteen, and died there nine years later, is the patron saint of missionary activity. This may seem an odd honor, but our theology reminds us that God’s gifts are never given simply to enrich the one who receives them. Rather, these gifts make us more and more effective agents for good in the world.
Shortly before she died, St. Therese said, "I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth." These words speak to us all. When we reach heaven we will enjoy the perfect vision of God, and one of the ways we will spend our eternity is in prayer for God’s Church on earth. Each of us shares a call to contemplation, because our Baptism calls us to make our life - here and now, to whatever extent we can - a sign of what we look forward to in heaven.
The contemplatives in our midst have chosen to remove themselves from some of the distractions of the world, but they never separate themselves from a concern for the world. Contemplative life may be the closest we can come to heaven on earth, but we must remember that in the kingdom of heaven the saints continually pray for the good of God’s kingdom on earth.


Kingdoms of Stone & the Kingdom of God

When we were small, the fairy-tale kingdoms we encountered in stories were castles with towers and battlements and moats and drawbridges. These images are so vivid that we may be quite advanced in years before we realize that this architectural reality does not correspond to Jesus’ statement that the kingdom of God is something within us.
Here is where our grammar comes to the aid of our faith. The suffix "-dom" at the end of a word means condition or state of being. "Thralldom" is the condition of slavery, "Freedom" the state of liberty. The "kingdom of God," then, is a condition by which we acknowledge God to be the ruler of our lives. And here is where we see that the reward for peace-making, to be called God’s children,is so appropriate.


A Reward to Fit the Deed

Those who seek purity of heart strive to see the world as God sees it. In return, they are promised that they will see God. It should come as no surprise, then, that those who strive to establish the reality of Christ’s kingdom should be promised that they will be called God’s children.
In the gospel, a child is a legal entity. To be a child does not simply mean to be a small person, it also - and more importantly - means to be an heir. Jesus did not come among us as a child so that we could become infants. He came as an infant so that we who had forgotten what it meant to be children could once again become heirs.
Citizenship in God’s kingdom demands the same surrender and submission to authority that citizenship does in any other society. It is a privilege granted to those whom God acknowledges as His children. Thus, it is only fair that the privilege of being called God’s children should be conferred first on those who work to extend the benefits of citizenship in God’s family.


Beatitude Today & Tomorrow

Throughout the beatitudes, we find a tension between a present reality and the future reward. The rewards will one day overturn the values of an imperfect world, but in the meantime, God’s reward in the future must set the pattern for our activity, as God’s people, in the present. In other words, we must strive to make real today what we expect to enjoy tomorrow.
St. John Chrysostom reminds us that

• ...although He give different names to the rewards, be not discouraged. For although He gives different names to the reward, yet He brings all into His kingdom (7).

Nevertheless, there is a certain eminence given to those among us who are peacemakers and pure of heart. This is because to be pure of heart and to be a peacemaker is to touch the world more nearly with the two qualities that characterize life in God’s kingdom - sight of God and union with God.
The other beatitudes prepare us for this blessing, either by strengthening us to turn away from attitudes that blind us to the vision of God’s kingdom, or by encouraging us to behave toward others as God has the right to expect of beings created in his image. To strive for purity of heart and peace is to establish on earth a sign of what God promises we will enjoy in heaven.

Mary, Queen of Peace

In the "Paradise" of Dante’s Divine Comedy, one of the blessed souls says, "in His will is our peace." The Mother of God was no politician, but she was a remarkable peacemaker because she understood so clearly that the interior tranquility we know as peace is the result of surrendering our wills to God’s. At the Annunciation Mary tells the angel, "be it done unto me according to thy word." In this she tells us that we have a choice, but the reward of tranquility is granted only to those who embrace God’s will.
We should note, however, that Mary does not hoard God’s peace. No sooner has she embraced God’s will for her than she rushes off to share this Good News with her cousin Elizabeth. God’s peace is too valuable to keep to ourselves; it fills us first, then it overflows to fill those whose lives we touch.

 

[sanctus]

BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO ARE PERSECUTED

By Father C. G. Vaillancourt

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount takes up three chapters in Matthew’s gospel. The beatitudes may be the most famous part of the sermon (which also includes the Lord’s Prayer), but they are by far the shortest. Jesus concludes this part of the sermon with the disquieting words

• Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. [And] blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets before you.
  
  

A Change of Voice

Here we must notice that Jesus turns from speaking of the impersonal "they," to talking to us directly. Jesus’ listeners must have shuddered when they heard these threatening words. Without question, the early Church that Matthew was writing for would have read these words as a warning that anyone interested in entering the community should prepare to suffer for the privilege of being part of a group that was living "as if" the apocalyptic judgement of Christ had already taken place.


A Warning and a Mission

These words should be the same sort of warning to us. To live in the image of Christ is to live in the shadow of all the evils that threatened Jesus. St. Leo the Great reminds us that we must "...so contemplate Jesus on the cross... that Jesus’ flesh is [our] own." And although this is the sort of thing we may not like to think about, Our Saviour’s words on the mountainside are also a reminder that if the world is speaking well of us, then perhaps we are not giving the proper prophetic witness.


Politicians & Prophets

Many of our elected officials conduct "focus groups" which discern what a given populace expects - or hopes - from its leaders. Candidates for office adjust their political platforms to appeal to those whose votes they hope to get. This behaviour is the perfectly acceptable "way of the world." It is not, however, the way of Our Lord, nor can it be the way of those who claim to be His ministers.
In the Old Testament, God’s prophets frequently suffered disgrace - or worse - for speaking in God’s name and calling leaders and citizens to task for failing to do God’s will. Jesus suffered the same fate, and His cross is a sign that we, too, may suffer if we dare to speak as prophets in our world. At the very least, Jesus warns us, we will be reviled, persecuted and slandered.


A Word from the Saints

We have frequently quoted St. John Chrysostom in these reflections on the Beatitudes. Here again St. John brings his own particular light to bear on our vocation as a prophetic people. He says

• ...lest thou shouldst think that the mere fact of being evil spoken of makes men blessed, He hath set two limitations; when it is for His sake, and when the things that are said are false; for without these, he who is evil spoken of, so far from being blessed, is miserable.

This is much the same counsel St. Peter gives us in his first letter to the Church: "...it is better to suffer for doing right if that should be God’s will, than for doing wrong" (1 Pet. 3:17). It is one thing to be a fool for God; it is quite another simply to be a fool. Jesus doesn’t command us to rejoice because we suffer, but because if we suffer for his sake, we claim a place among the prophets.


The Beatitudes, Jesus, & Us

The beatitudes are a perfect description of Jesus who "for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might become rich" (2 Cor 8:9). If we hope to enjoy the reward of the saints, we must find a way to make the beatitudes describe us, too. Wealth can be calculated in different ways, but we must never forget that the social, intellectual, economic and political spheres of our lives have claims on them. From earliest times the Church has taught us that if we are not sharing these gifts, we are taking them from those who need them.


The Example of Mary

The last word on the Beatitudes - and this is nothing more than one should expect from these pages - is that we find our model and exemplar for all that Christ teaches in His mother. Mary is the first to hear the Good News of the Incarnation, and she is the first person to preach the gospel. Her Magnificat describes just about all we need to know about our relation to God and his care for us.
Psychologists have constructed detailed profiles for many of the individuals in the Scripture and, if we are fortunate, we may be able to see ourselves in our favorite biblical hero. More often, we may find ourselves concluding, sadly, that we have little in common with these great figures in our faith. This is not the case with Mary. The evangelists record so little of Mary that when we encounter her, we may feel she has just turned away her face. And this is precisely what the evangelists want us to feel, because whenever we encounter Mary in the gospel story we find nothing so personal about her that we cannot put ourselves in her place.


Mary’s Unique Witness to the Entire gospel

Mary is the one individual present at every moment in the life of Jesus and the early Church, so when we encounter her in the gospel we are supposed to see ourselves - frightened at the enormity of what God asks of us, perhaps, but nonetheless confident that we have been blessed.
At Cana she turns to the servants and says, "do whatever He tells you." She is also speaking to us, commanding us to do whatever Jesus tells us - and teaching us by her example. In his Apostolic Letter, On the Most Holy Rosary, Pope John Paul II wrote that Mary invites us

• ...to do as she did at the Annunciation: to ask humbly the questions which open us to the light, in order to end with the obedience of faith (14).

The story of the wedding at Cana is one of the most magnificent in the gospel, worthy to be included among the Luminous Mysteries of Our Lady’s Rosary. The miracle at Cana is not only the first of Christ’s signs, it is a perfect illustration of the Incarnation, when Jesus took on the watery stuff of our humanity and transformed it into something far more interesting. But the wealth that he came to share is only manifest if we are willing to do His will and share it with the world.


Mary: the Model of Poverty

In this task we have no better example than the Blessed Virgin. She is the model for our detachment and poverty of spirit, so she can sing of God who fills the hungry with good things, and lifts up the lowly. Her going in haste to proclaim the good news of the Incarnation makes her the model of our active life, with its goal of bringing Christ to the world and inviting others to help us establish God’s kingdom on earth.


The Model for Contemplative Life

And Mary is the model of our contemplative life, teaching us by her example, the pontiff reminds us, "to contemplate the face of Christ" (10). At the birth of Christ, he says, "her eyes were able to gaze tenderly on the face of her Son."

• Thereafter, Mary’s gaze, ever filled with adoration and wonder, would never leave him. At times it would be a questioning look...it would always be a penetrating gaze, one capable of deeply understanding Jesus...at other times it would be a look of sorrow.... On the morning of Easter hers would be a gaze radiant with the joy of the Resurrection,...and finally, on the day of Pentecost, a gaze afire with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (11).

The Model for Active Life

After the Annunciation, the gospel tells us that Mary "arose and went with haste" to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth. The dictionary defines "haste" as "celerity of motion," or "swiftness," so there is no question that Mary made this journey speedily. But the dictionary also defines haste as "dispatch" or "urgency," which takes haste out of the realm of mere speed and gives it a certain intention. Mary undoubtedly made the journey as quickly as she could - but she also made it with a certain determination and purpose.


A Model for this Life & the Next

In the "Purgatory" of Dante’s Divine Comedy, every soul is spurred toward heaven with an appropriate passage from Scripture. Those atoning for sins of laziness cry out the words from the gospel: "Mary ran with haste unto the mountain." "Swift, swift," they cry, "that time be not lost by little love."
We commonly think of laziness as putting off things we ought to do, but this procrastination is only a symptom of laziness. St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that sloth is a vice opposed to the virtue of charity. (ST II-II, iii) It is a growing cold where we ought to be warm, and going slowly where we ought to make haste.
Mary is the model for our behaviour at all times, but she is especially so when she teaches us to make haste to do good. To act with speed, to be sure, but also with urgency and passion "that time be not lost by little love."

Mother of the Incarnation

Mary clothes God’s word with all the hopes and longings of God’s people in the Old Testament - and tells us almost all we need to know about our vocation. That we must listen to God’s word. That we must give God’s word flesh and blood and a human face. That the Good News is too good to be kept to ourselves. And that there is an urgency in proclaiming it. "Swift, swift," she cries, "that time be not lost by little love."


Conclusion

We began these reflections on the Beatitudes with St. Thomas Aquinas’ remark that there are three kinds of happiness (I-II, 69.3): the happiness of sensuality, the happiness of activity, and the happiness of contemplation. Sensual happiness is an obstacle to future happiness, so in the first of the Beatitudes, Jesus promises a reward to those who are willing to turn away from the goods of the world and moderate our use of the power by which we can achieve them.
The happiness of the active life - and here we must remember that this is a life of good work, not simply exercise or mindless running around - disposes us to future happiness. Jesus promises a reward to those who seek justice and actively work to relieve the distress of others because the world created by these individuals is a sign of God’s kingdom.


The Call to Contemplation

The happiness of the contemplative life is an introduction to what we have to look forward to in the future, when we will share God’s eternal life in heaven. "Contemplative Life" is one of those terms that can seem quite daunting, because it carries with it the image of Thomas Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, and other members of the Church’s small band of exalted mystics. In fact, every Christian is called to the contemplative life, although God may reward with ecstatic vision only a few of those who embrace it.
In its simplest terms, contemplation is knowledge coupled with delight. It is not the study of truth, but a sense of wonder, awe and joy that accompanies our reflection on a truth we already grasp. Contemplation is not something we achieve on our own; it is God’s gift to those who have developed a deep life of prayer. However, one motto of the Dominican Order is "contemplata allis tradere," a command to share with others the fruits of our contemplation. This suggests that God is generous with the gift of contemplation (because we cannot be commanded to do the impossible) - and it reminds us that no gift is ever given just to enrich the person who receives it. Rather, the gift is given to an individual to be shared with the whole Church.
Jesus commends the pure of heart and those who are peacemakers because these individuals live now as we look forward to living in heaven. There, nothing will tempt us away from God, and we will enjoy forever the perfect tranquility of resting in His Pr1esence. Those who suffer persecution for their profession of faith share the reward of contemplation because the sign of the cross they endure now will be the sign by which they are honoured forever. "To him who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is the paradise of God" (Rev. 2.7).

 

[m_levesque]

A wonderful set of thoughts and meditations Father. Thank you for sharing these with us.