As I am writing this, I am thinking about how humbling it is to try and put on paper what the Christian life is. Who am I to teach? Who am I, who barely even knows what Christianity is, let alone lives it out daily, to tell others what “living for God” really means?! I hate this part of my job because everything that I write is what I also need to hear myself. I feel constantly like a hypocrite. The Good News is that Jesus came just for people like me: “do you not know that it is the sick who need a physician?”
First, go and read Matthew 5:3-12, which is called the Beatitudes, or “The Blessings”. I know that we have all heard these things before, but be warned that our ‘humble piety’ might stand in the way of letting this smack you in the face with its raw honesty.
Blessed are the poor in spirit. This means that you have to realize that you are not a good person. Yeah, you are made in God’s image but you certainly do not act like Him. “Get behind me, Satan, for you are thinking like Man, not God” says Jesus to Peter right after making him Pope! Being poor in spirit is tied to being poor materially. You realize that you don’t have anything, you are broke spiritually, and your righteousness, if it could actually be called that, is “like filthy rags” compared to God. So, step one: realize that all your sin is your fault and all the goodness in your life is God’s. Once you have this change of heart into humility, you move into the next Beatitude.
Blessed are they who mourn. This one makes me laugh: happy are those who are sad! How paradoxical, yet we gloss over it so easily with a nod of the head and a whisper of “Yup, that’s true” without giving it some critical thinking. We mourn because we are unrighteous. We don’t hate ourselves, become discouraged, or beat ourselves up: we mourn. We mourn like a king who is disposed of his crown, because we dispossessed ourselves of our glorious destiny with every sin we commit! Mourn, repent, turn away from sin, and you will be comforted!
Blessed are the meek. It is not to the wealthy, healthy, successful, or powerful that are called by Jesus “blessed” or “happy”. It is the meek, the humble, those who “regard others as more important than oneself,” which is the same attitude that Jesus had. Meekness is not weakness, but the subjugation of power to love. Jesus had the power to destroy his enemies at the foot of the cross as they mocked him, but he just hung there out of love for them. It is only the meek that will inherit the earth because only they will subjugate power over the earth to the generous reign of charity.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Put down your money, your media, your steady flow of entertainment, your idols in a thousand middle-class American Dreams, and start to hunger and thirst for righteousness. We long for many things, but until we purify our desires, we will never be satisfied. We were made for God and God alone; all substitutions will ultimately leave us frustrated and empty. Only heaven is big enough for our God-needing hearts. It’s time to become DESPERATELY in love with God. Nothing less satisfies our hearts!
Blessed are the merciful. There is no way around this one: if you are not merciful to others, especially to those who attacked you and wronged you, then you will not receive mercy for yourself. Every time you are hurt, you must forgive, even when that past hurt returns in your memories to hurt you even more. You don’t deserve God’s mercy, but he gave it to you anyway because he loves you. So, we follow him and give out our mercy, even if it kills us, to those who have hurt us. Then will we be a merciful people.
Blessed are the Pure of Heart. Purity of heart is not just about having the Christian vision concerning sexuality, but about our fundamental view of the dignity of our neighbor. The heart is the seat of sin and also of God’s throne. Evilness comes from the heart. Goodness must then conquer even the deepest, darkness, most lost parts of our hearts if we are to see the face of God. Being pure of heart means seeing the person as a person, not as a collection of body parts, a project or an instrument.
Blessed are the peacemakers. Peacemakers are rare. Peace-demanders might be plentiful, but those who make peace are few. The reason being is simple: it is easy to make war, whether it is with yourself, your family or your enemies. It is easy to be driven by ego, to demand that your entitled to a little more respect, to assert yourself against others. It is difficult to die to yourself, to let your egotism fall away, to let someone else have their way. In short, to make peace you have to learn to die, not to kill. It would serve us well to reinstitute humility into our relationships.
Blessed are those persecuted for righteousness. Yeah, we start with the cross of Christ, who alone makes us worthy, and end with our own cross! We begin in personal humility and end in social humiliation, like the Son of God hanging naked from a tree. The Beatitudes were never meant to be easy and the eighth beautitude becomes for us now the great sign post of the Christian life: "Easter Sunday, Only Through Good Friday." Would we still be good even if every one around us called us evil? Would we still be Christians when Christianity no longer garnered public support? Would we still call on Jesus when doing so is a crime? I fear my own answers to this question. I fear my own cross. "...and follow after me."
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