I have been contemplating the Beatitudes for several years now. On an earlier blog, in 2014, I started laying out what I saw as an internal structure to these eight sublime couplets of our Master. Seeing them as an integrated and ordered rule for discipleship reveals them as more insistent on the hearer than does a simple list of virtuous dispositions with attending graces. Least of all should we see these beatific states as a collection of different personality types, as if only some apply to us individually. No, It is possible, without sophisticated wrangling, to see the Beatitudes presenting as a stepwise progression from initiation to victory. And this development by the same unity of esoteric and exoteric learning which our Teacher delivers in all His pronouncements, always at once enigmatic and plain spoken.
“Many are called, but few are chosen”.
In the Beatitudes recorded in Saint Matthew’s Gospel we find a rule for Christian discipleship. Before Jesus teaches these sublime truths, he puts a test to the multitude that has gathered around Him after his initial preaching and healing ministry. He selects, by their choice, who would be His disciples.
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set down, his disciples came unto him. And opening his mouth, he taught them, saying . . .
St. Matthew 5:1-2
By this action Jesus asks, “Will you follow me in faith?” And such reward for those who do! As we will see, the beatific discipline of these eight couplets can be seen to work as a whole, taking us from weakness to strength, from poverty to riches in the Spirit.
1 “Blessed are the poor in spirit; theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.
In any human practice we must start with humility before the traditions of the craft, school, or instrument we hope to master. The collective patient learning of our predecessors is invaluable to our own learning. Even more so for spiritual practice under Christ Jesus; we must learn to empty ourselves before the rule of our discipleship to enter His kingdom. By the spirit of our age, we are taught that our notions already have worth by virtue of being ours. Such self-insistence, however, will only cost us the kingdom of heaven. This is the spiritual paradox of discipleship; we must give up everything of our own to gain more than we can ask or imagine.
Achieving proper orientation toward this poverty of spirit takes careful instruction, contemplation, and practice. Being fallen creatures, as we all are, there are false ways to conceive this poverty of spirit. Depression, for example, does not satisfy this disposition, as this is often an inclination to self-pity—an over estimation of what our worth or accomplishments should have been against some external standard we have failed to meet or be inspired by. This disjuncture can be from poorly taught or improperly received Christian moral rule; seeing through these errors so as to not repeat them can be challenging. Of course, depression can have other causes, but generally we have pandered to the psychological reality of this mood or condition of spiritual being in our age, to the detriment of souls. If we suffer from this disposition for a long time, we become inactive physically, and fixed mentally, so we become intrenched in the despondency of this meaninglessness state, self-condemned by the standards of this world we have failed to internalize. Paradoxically, the solution to this seemingly terminal spiritual malignancy can be poverty of spirit. For the bodily part, some robust physical activity is good medicine.
The work of the Master is to make His rule interior, to write it on our hearts. Unless we are properly oriented toward them, we can practice many virtues as vices. As well, if we follow the rule of this wicked age, we can practice many vices as if they were virtues. Only when we empty ourselves of all our pride, all the ways we prop up our status before the world, all the ways we mean to hold ourselves together, all the stories we tell ourselves about how good or how bad we are, can we be remade into a citizen fit for the kingdom of heaven.
There can be no pretense in our poverty of spirit. We know in ourselves, and witness in others, feigned humility. Such a disposition is rightly called false because it, like depression, is a cloak for pride. Humility like this is a utility for self elevation, for controlling others, for placing ourselves above our fellows. In truth, it is a form of self-righteousness. Our reason for trying to fake this poverty is obvious; true poverty of spirit is difficult, painful to find and terrifying to face when we do find it—it leaves us unprotected before the Master. Yet, as we must always remember through this discipline, He does not require this poverty either to be cruel or to mock us. As St James says “If any of you want wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men abundantly, and upbraids not; and it shall be given him”(1:5). We see if we acknowledge our want, our poverty, God is there to supply us, if we ask rightly. As we will see, if we believe that God is, and that He rewards those who seek Him diligently, He will lift us up, clothe us in strength and justice, and place us on our feet more securely than before. The cost, however, is all our self-esteem and pride.
Then Jesus said to his disciples: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For he that will save his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall find it.
St Matthew 16:24-25
So, we see this first, and most important, step of discipleship cannot be rushed into. Nor do we want to expect to get it perfectly right the first try, or any try after that. We will, though, grow toward perfection each time we place ourselves under this discipline and commence with the emptying of ourselves before our kind and faithful Master. It is sufficient that we examine ourselves and carefully search for those parts of our self-conception that cause pride, that which stands between our full love of God and neighbour.
2 “Blessed are they that mourn; they will be comforted”.
By the natural and spiritual law, sorrow follows true poverty of spirit. This can be an unwelcome surprise, specially when this practice is new to us. Even as we advance, we will continually be overwhelmed by the acute awareness of our vulnerability and a profound sorrow for wrongs we have done to others, those done to us, as well as shame at the recognition of the pride we have shown toward God Himself, as we have set our will above His. Such pride is always absurdly foolish. As Saint John Chrysostom tells us in his most worthy homily, the 15th on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, our Lord is clearly not talking about self-pity as sorrow, nor simply about the regular sorrows of life. Though He does care for us through these, and ultimately all sorrow will be comforted by Him, if we persist on the path till the end. In the discipline of the Beatitudes this mourning refers to spiritual sorrow, repentance, and penance, as this is the immediate result of poverty of spirit, properly oriented.
For the sorrow that is according to God works penance, steadfast unto salvation; but the sorrow of the world works death.
2 Corinthians 7:10
We will see, in all of the beatitudes there is a spiritual state or blessed disposition followed by a grace granted in the Spirit. In all eight there is a fullness of this grace granted in the Age to come. Yet, each have graces granted along the path of discipleship in this life. Most disciples cannot remain in a perpetual state of sorrow, and to do so, even over our sins, will keep us from growing, from acting in righteous justice once absolved of our sins. As Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians in the context of the passage quoted above; he did not want to cause them sorrow for its own sake but to bring them to penance. So, we accept the comforting grace of the Master as it comes to us along the way. We must not rush to this comfort, however. We need this cleansing sorrow to purify our souls, and it is a grace in its own right and is the necessary spiritual cost and cause of the beatific comfort. If we do not see this progression, if we have been improperly instructed in the Gospel, and believe that we cannot participate in our salvation and be transformed by the Master’s discipline interiorly, these Beatitudes are at best quaint platitudes, and at worst they become false promises, only very remotely delivered on, while we stagger and stumble in the darkness of sin today.
Let us with confidence and courage, then, continue along this way. We have only just begun, but this two-part initiation is the most cathartic stage in our process. We see there are many ways our self conception can be disoriented. And it is only through a deliberate practice of emptying ourselves of all we have considered to be of worth about us, and the world, that we can find ourselves prosperously under the hand of the Master in this discipline of the Beatitudes.
Note: We have chosen the older Greek manuscript translations, rather than the Vulgate ordering of the beatitudes. For uncertain reasons St. Jerome placed our third Beatitude second, and our second, third. That order does not make the disciplinary qualities of the Beatitudes as clear as the Greek manuscript order.
3 “Blessed are the meek; they shall posses the land”.
This seems an unlikely paradox to materialize but by miraculous intervention. This seems so only if we miss the paradox at the heart of meekness. Of course, the Lord rewards those who wait on Him, as Psalm 37, this beatitude’s antecedent, tells us. Yet, meekness is not simply a repeat of the profound humility we had in poverty of spirit. It is this humility, but whereas by the first beatitude we were emptying our pride, by this beatitude we have become strong through the Lord’s comforting after our confession of sin and our penance. So, if poverty of spirit is the humility of our emptying, meekness is the humility of our filling; it is the means by which we properly orient ourselves toward God and the world as we grow in spiritual strength. There is always a temptation toward pride with any spiritual gift. “Meekness is not weakness,” as we have often heard preached, and this is most certainly true. Meekness is, by the paradox, profound strength, but strength under control of humility. For this strength is the Master’s reward, and so not of ourselves. Personal pride toward this strength is the grievous sin of theft, and that from God!
Elsewhere in the Psalms the word for “possess” in Psalm 37 refers to taking the land by conquest. We see then, the martial artist, not the physical coward, is the better model of a meek man. The skilled warrior does not make a boastful show of strength. Rather, he only uses what he needs for the struggle at hand. The weakling does not throw a punch at a scoundrel because he is afraid to. The meekling only uses force when it is expedient. More, the meek disciple of Christ Jesus does not seek his own advantage by his strength. He surrenders his strength in service of the Master in humility, as the Master surrendered His, meekly, in giving His life for the Church.
How the blessing of possessing the land is fulfilled is according to the God’s will. As with all of the beatitudes we must seek to develop the blessed state or characteristic, rather than seek its reward, as if to possess the land of itself—to gain political sway—will necessarily mean it was through our meekness. Yet by a quiet persistent humble strength we can, quite unintentionally, conquer the world! We have seen this in the early conquest by the Church of the Roman empire and further in the intermittent restorations inspired by various Saints over Christian history, those who have risen up with only a sword of the Spirit in their hands and have reconquered their lands for the kingdom for heaven.
4 “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice; they will be filled.”
Having emptied ourselves and sorrowed for the condition this has revealed in us and having received the comforting grace of the Holy Spirit, we find ourselves changed. We are stronger, yea, even wiser through this meekness, but we don’t know what to do by our own will, or by our own understanding any longer. So, we crave the good things of God. The Greek manuscript translations have ‘righteousness’, while the Vulgate has ‘justice’ in the first phrase of this Beatitude. In English we tend to think righteousness is a personal virtue, whereas justice is a corporate one. If there were a word that meant both at once it would be well to contemplate it. For, though our personal holiness and righteousness is both desired and required in our discipleship, as the Master examples, this is never only for ourselves, but for the community of saints and for the world. We cannot posses the earth for Christ except by His righteous justice.
Fasting is implied in this hunger for righteousness. When we deny ourselves, even what is necessary to this perishable body, it makes us think on what is of eternal worth. Yet, though an aide, we should not think that fasting will satisfy this beatitude on its own. We are told of a blessed state where we desire righteousness, and the justice it manifests, just as we desire food and drink for living. As our Master says to the devil, in Matthew 4:4, “Not in bread alone does man live, but in every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”. Again, though so very far above us in all things, our God and savior, having lowered himself and taking on our nature, has set the example of desiring spiritual food, even above bodily food, in his response to the temptation to turn stones to bread.
This hunger for righteousness can be filled in many ways. We may read Holy Scripture, read the lives of the Saints, their homilies or journals, or those of the long honoured spiritual teachers of the Church; we may recite the creeds, or prayers of the Church, even certain theological works may be good spiritual food in our beatific craving. Only we should not suppose we can find this food within ourselves, nor should we read what is speculative or controversial. We must in this hunger remember that we are impoverished, and we need the wealth of those who have worked out their own salvation with fear and trembling before us; we need the simple food of faith, especially in the beginning of our walk in the way.
5 “Blessed are the merciful: they will obtain mercy”.
Mercy is the required prompt of its own reward; we cannot expect to get it unless we are free in giving it. Again, the Master is our chief exemplar in this practice. For even though He had never made offence such as to need mercy granted Him, He was merciful to others throughout His earthly life. As well, when we consider the righteous power of the Master, the perfect right He had to exercise justice on all people in every interaction with them, yet, instead he showed mercy. Mercy, then, like meekness, is not granted out of weakness or because we do not have justice on our part. We have no ability to show mercy without both justice and the power to enact its requirements. That is, we must not confuse mercy with indifference, with a permissiveness to sin and its injustices. Mercy is graced to those who fall short of righteous justice in order to bring them into the discipline of the beatitudes, to help them see their own poverty, and let them see they should realize this in their spirit. We are all worthy of divine condemnation. If we are so blessed as to have been emptied of sin, forgiven, to have made penance for sin, and to have been filled with the food of righteousness such that we can discern justly, we must exercise this judgement with mercy, for it is only by the gracious mercy of Jesus that we are in such a beatific state.
We see the sublime wisdom of these seemingly simple couplets of the Master. For just as we have emptied ourselves, mourned, been comforted and then filled with righteous justice, we are told, not to conquer the land with this sword of righteousness, but, to use this new power to convert sinners to the way with the same mercy the Lord so completely has shown us all, the mercy by which we ourselves first saw our natural poverty and humbled ourselves before the Master of our souls.
6 “Blessed are the pure in heart; they will see God.”
This Beatitude seems to leap to a place far from us. In this life we will not purify our hearts so completely as to be able to stand in the presence of God. As with all of the Beatitudes, the ultimate fulfillment is in Heaven, when, in the presence of God, the Blessed will be enrapt in the beatific vision for the timeless eternity to come. Yet, unless we begin our purification in this life, we have no hope of this vision in the future. If we are honest, when we consider the terrible magnitude of this experience of seeing the living God, we cry out, “Not yet Lord, I am not ready, my heart is not yet clean!” Now that we know the goal of this disciple’s path we are on, may we take all our steps with mortal gravity.
Like the other Beatitudes, there are glimpses of this vision in various ways throughout this life. There will be times when our souls are enlightened in a mysterious way, when we quake at the proximity of our Master and Maker. We can only know it is Him because His character conforms to the character the beatific discipline has been forming in us. We see the importance of the order of this discipline even more now. Jesus does not start with our purity of heart and the divine communion; we are wholly unprepared for this at the start of our discipleship. Nor does he start with filling us with righteous justice. We see that first we must have a right disposition toward God, a realization of our natural poverty. Left to ourselves, we all fill this spiritual emptiness with pride, self protection, and wicked distractions, we must empty ourselves of all falsehood to begin our discipline. Then, we mourn our sinful condition and the sin of the fallen world we inhabit. By our penance we are comforted, made strong as He is strong, meekly so. Then, our spirit and character prepared by his chastening love we are ravenous for the good things of our Master. Filled with such, we are told to practice our new strength with mercy, as He is merciful. By this practice then we learn of the character of the Father who causes His rain to fall on the just and the unjust. All this is to prepare us to see Him face to face. What sublime rapturous wisdom!
When we catch such glimpses of the beatific vision to come, in this life, we should be grateful for them. Yet, by the wisdom of the saints who have had these more completely and more often than most will in this life, we must not hold on to them too tightly. We must not make them the cause of our faith, nor its goal in this life. We are not here to ‘trip on Jesus’, we are here to be purified and made worthy of His service. If we spend our time trying to conjure spiritual consolations, we will not receive legitimate ones, and we open ourselves to the counterfeit wares of the deceiver. No, as we saw with possessing the land, we were invited to develop a characteristic, meekness, the beatific grace that follows is the work of the Lord. So, we should not seek such visions of God any more than we should the land, we should seek to purify our heart through the discipline we have learned, and if we are surprised by the glimpsed presence of His Glory, we will know it is His gift, and not some shabby substitute we have conjured by our own means, or some even worse spiritual deception.
This discipline shows us how “with fear and trembling we work out our salvation”. Of course, we cannot save ourselves, “for it is God who works in us, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will” (Philippians 2:12-13). Yet we clearly participate in our perfection and sanctification by surrendering to his chastening and instructing love, and by this communication with our Master in this beatific discipline we are day by day made increasingly worthy of His presence. This is an immeasurable gift that Jesus offers us. This work of perfection in our souls is such a divine honour, we find that many turn away from it or would prefer to see that Jesus simply covers their sinfulness, holding that we cannot be transformed in this life. This is false humility, and spiritual laziness, worse, it is a heretical understanding of the call of salvation. Faith is certainly the key by which we enter the narrow gate that leads to life, and faith is the animating mood that keeps us going along the way. But these works of faith are every bit as important as the feeling of faith. Even more so, for we can do our faith out of duty even when our faith mood is weak, and this practical devotion can rejuvenate our heart’s convictions.
7 “Blessed are the peacemakers; they will be called the children of God”.
As said, in this life we are to be about the Master’s business, the beatific discipline is not merely ‘self-improvement’. Firstly, it is a path of self denial; it intends to get ourselves out of the way so we can become worthy vessels of the divine will. Secondly, we cannot help ourselves down the Way but must participate with the Master: being humbled, emptying our will to sin, being filled with righteousness, and humbly practicing justice in community. Without proper instruction in righteous justice, we cannot do this peacemaking work according to His will. We see again that our discipleship does not start with, “Blessed are the peacemakers”, though this is certainly a virtuous occupation for a disciple of Christ. Yet it comes late in the process of our discipline. Jesus does not send us out to muddle our way through this task, unprepared. We would only, make offence by imposing our own righteousness, or sow discord by avenging a sense of personal justice.
Peace then is a particular practice of mercy. For, this peacemaking is the preaching of the Gospel, in word and deed.
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that brings good tidings, and that preaches peace: of him that shows forth good, that preaches salvation, that says to Sion: Your God shall reign! Isaias 52:7
The world seeks to “Teach Peace” as a beginning and end in itself. As if we can bring peace to this world without contemplation on the natural, and submission to the spiritual law of God. We are fallen creatures; without careful instruction through the beatific discipline, we can engender no lasting peace. Without the righteous justice Christ alone can teach through the natural and spiritual law, which this discipline perfectly synthesises, as we have seen, we will only preach, “Peace, peace, where there is no peace”.
By this work in peacemaking, we prove we are God’s children as the grace granted this practice. It may be that men or women may make this assessment of a disciple who brings concord where there is strife, but it is the Lord’s naming of his children that matters to us. By the world’s desires, being at war with God’s, it seems that God does not bring peace but a sword. The arc of God’s peacemaking is long and patient. It is not that of the Pax Romana or any such tyrannical maintenance of peace by force and terror. The Master’s peace comes through the conversion of souls away from the strife of sin to the ordered life of obedience to the divine law of love. We should note that the vision of God, in whatever mediated form it comes to us in this life, is not the end of our discipleship; only when we go into community and practice the essence of this vision in peace are we counted the children of God.
8 “Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.
This final beatitude may seem discouraging; why after so much work can we, at times, be so unwelcome in this world? Why doesn’t our Master prepare us for success? Yet, we are not called to distribute utopian formulae to solve personal and corporate strife. This strife issues from our separation from God since the fall: the inheritance of deep rebellion in our souls through original sin—a few inspiring platitudes will not cure this malignancy. And though our hearts have begun to be softened by the Master’s wisdom, we know that in our flesh we still war with His perfect law of love. How can we expect that the world will happily receive this message when given by us when it has not yet received Him?
These things I command you, that you love one another. If the world hates you, know ye, that it has hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember my word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also.
St John 15:17-29
So, we must not think that our peacemaking mission will bring peace right away. And it is a grave error to set the attainment of peace as the standard by which we judge whether our actions conform to the Master’s discipline. By an attempt to put peace first we see the degeneration of Church faith and moral rule in these last days. If ‘fraternity’, or peace as an intrinsic value, if it is our principal commitment, we will necessarily compromise faith, doctrine, and morals in the name of peace. Our Master said, “I came not to bring peace, but a sword”. And such often is the paradox of our Christian walk; we are sent to preach and live peace, but in holding to the divine law we will find, at times, violent resistance to our words and actions. Unconverted flesh, which has not welcomed divine grace in to transform it, is at war with the Spirit.
Of course, neither should we assume all strife or persecution signify our virtue. Our discipline requires continuous contemplation, practice, and growth. Again, the Master does not start with beatific persecution. He starts with the deeply personal cost of the cross, poverty of spirit; He ends then with its public cost, our social participation in His crucifixion. And in this commonality, we see the arc of the beatific discipline as well, for both poverty of spirit and persecution for faithfulness to righteous justice signify our citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. Above all that has come before, we need to be prepared for this eventuality of persecution. In our own selves we need strong communication with the Lover of our souls to endure rejection in peace, as he did. As well, we are not called to go out and seek strife, by the previous beatitude we are sent to bring peace. Even when this peacemaking of the children of God is rejected, and brings the conflict of persecution, His children must continue in peace under fire.
This world often hates the requirements of divine justice and has been taught to hate the very name of Jesus. We know this in ourselves when we have resisted His insistence on holiness of life, patience in adversity, or mercy toward our offenders. If we find ourselves under this beatific discipline, it is a grace from the Master that we have heard this call. To stand in this world and make true righteous offence in this age of degeneracy, we must first submit to the cleansing sorrow of being made wretched at the sight of our own sinfulness. We are of ourselves no better than any person of this age. Only having been emptied of our own wickedness, can we feast on the righteous justice of the Master. We should then, not be timid to speak the Gospel of justice into this evil age, but we should neither be found unprepared in hypocrisy, calling out sin in others while we are yet in sin ourselves. We see this beatific discipline does not manifest in an easy way, leading to simple answers. As Jesus says later in the Sermon on the Mount,
Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leads to life: and few there are that find it
St Matthew 7:13-14
And this final beatitude is the only one with a reprise, an extra grace.
Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that were before you.
St Matthew 5:11-12
And this encouragement is followed by perhaps the most delightfully encouraging words in all of Scripture. Words that children can grasp and adults can never reach the full meaning of. that this passage follows the Beatitudes indicates that they provide a mandate for the work of the beatific discipline. And if ever we are discouraged along the way, we should have committed this passage to memory and recite it to remind us of the purpose of our discipleship.
You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men. You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house. So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
St Matthew 5:13-16