I hope to put various widget boxes on the side bar of the blog (not visible to email and “readers” (such as google, etc.) which contain the diverse series that we’ve run on http://holysoulshermitage.com Let’s start with some comments on the ferocious beatitudes. And you have to know, they are ferocious!
Here’s the ferocious HSH series on the Beatitudes
Filed under Beatitudes
The extreme sports idiocy my brother and I could get into would prepare us – little did we know – for the horrific magnitude of the trouble we would both know later in life. Not that we found trouble together back in the day. We created enough of our own trouble going our separate ways.
My brother was, in my opinion, perhaps the best thing to come near what I remember to be a four-stroke 500cc dirt-bike, not that he hasn’t had some pretty severe accidents. Mostly, he just had a bit of fun with the police. I hope he doesn’t mind me recounting this.
One fine afternoon, I remember making the two and half mile walk home from my summer job at the high school in north-central Minnesota. I heard police sirens squealing from miles away in every which direction, on every which road there was. This went on for about half an hour. The chase was on!
Later, I found out what it was all about. I thought it was pretty awesome, though I don’t recommend that anyone does this! Apparently, my brother didn’t see eye to eye with one of the campus police, who was lazily sitting in his cruiser alongside a gravel road. My brother couldn’t resist. He rode right up to the officer, who had his window rolled down, and then did a couple of ‘cookies’, spraying loads of gravel and dirt into and all over the cruiser. The chase was on. They didn’t catch him. An afternoon’s entertainment. It’s hard to catch someone on a dirt-bike, on dirt.
O.K., back to my own trouble. I liked sports as a kid, but I also had and have bad legs, and didn’t know anything about extreme sports, yet. I was into running for a while, but the legs wouldn’t hold up. I tried varsity football, but that was worse for the legs. I loved swimming and did quite a lot of that, always trying to push the limit with things. In junior highschool I think I remember swimming underwater for about five lengths of the huge pool. I did that because the coach bragged he could do two lengths of the pool underwater.
I had been introduced to waterskiing as a kid, always with two skis to please the folks. But as a teenager, hanging around the neighbors house (some miles away), guaranteed being dragged around the lake behind their boat. The first time as a teenager, I used only one ski. I then ditched that in favor of bare feet with no skis at all. That worked great. But those times were pretty rare.
Much more frequent was downhill snow-skiing during the long Minnesota winters. I figured that skiing wouldn’t be so hard on my legs. After all, the skis just stayed on the snow, didn’t they?
The university had a ski hill with a single rope tow that we kids ran for free. We just had to keep the rope spliced and knock down the tall grass and brush in the autumn before the snow fell. We kind of did that, but were distracted with building a huge jump out of old machinery and bales of hay conveniently before the snow fell on the ready made jump.
Once in a while my father would dump us two boys off at the local ski “resort”, which cost, I think, $4.50 on weekdays. It was here that I was introduced to extreme sports. I was soon better than anyone, I thought, on the steep walls of moguls, as they were called, flying straight down these impossible obstacle courses. I would also cut in between ski slopes where no one else dared to go, through deep, wooded ravines – complete with frozen creeks and snow covered boulders – all at breakneck speeds, come what may when exploding up and out the top of the ridge on the other side. I soon learned I could do any of these things only a few times on any given expedition, as this also was hard on my ever ailing legs.
There was, however, one activity a handful of us kids would throw ourselves into again and again… and again. And I was by far the most insane of all of them. Off to the side of “the ridge”, there was a hundred foot long jump that had been built up with bulldozers over the summer. In the winter, a mountain of hay bales was piled high on top of that to make the jump even higher. The idea was to approach the jump slowly, do a few tricks in the hang-time, then land smoothly on the steep slope constructed by the bulldozers. In this way, no one could really get hurt. People did get hurt, of course, doing extra flips and spins in the air that they weren’t prepared to do, thus keeping the ski-patrols busy with splints and sleds.
I could do plenty of tricks, but I thought all that to be boring. So, instead, I would take the chairlift to the top of the hill, five slopes over and (perhaps a quarter mile) way, way above the jump, which was itself as far down the hill as possible, just above the parking lots. I would pick up speed by launching myself off the chairlift, then skate on the skis, tucking down and racing like a bullet, barely avoiding people and trees, finally hitting the jump built on top of the jump at full speed, flying along the tree tops and far past the end of the landing ramp of the jump, far out on the flats below. Crack! The sound of the skis slamming onto the hard packed snow below could be heard like a 50mm gun shot. I would have just enough time to slow down and not crash into the people who were lined up to go back up the hill. I destroyed three sets of skis in this way… parce que je suis un enfant terrible! Buying second-hand skis was, of course, the order of the day.
Now, it would have been fatal, of course, to fall straight down from such a height, but I was going so fast that there was no danger of being hurt in such a landing, though it seemed like it would be certain death every time, which was the whole fun of it. I would almost be knocked unconscious as the rest of my body would slam down onto the back of the skis. On some days, cameras were everywhere, filming my antics, but that, I thought, was just annoying. They couldn’t possibly understand the exhilaration of hanging between life and death for seconds on end, which seemed much, much longer going through it, time and again.
If such an extreme sport had been a death wish – which some people said it was – this would have been manifested in activities that were actually a risk to life and limb. What I didn’t know is that, in all this activity, I was destroying my knees for life. Yet, I still don’t regret those adventures. I really was having a great time. Even after all this I could still run like the wind, but only for shorter distances. Now I can walk quickly, though after a few seconds that slows up too.
To the point! Let’s make an analogy: Death defying extreme sports sharpened awareness that I was, in fact, alive, and that to stay alive, I had to make the right choices all along the way, not only on the ski slopes, but in going through life. The analogy had to be repeated a thousand times on the ski slopes in order to sink into my thick skull. Crack! And then, Crack! And then, Crack! yet again.
On the ski slopes, I made sure to end up alive, however much all depended on me. But I’ve learned that throwing myself headlong through life necessitates depending on the Lord if I’m to stay alive. Only He knows the obstacles that we will find as we throw ourselves headlong into trust in His providence. Following His lead is the only way of coming out alive.
Right now, at this time in my life, as a priest-hermit in the middle of nowhere, far from the rest of humanity, on a back-ridge of Holy Souls Mountain in Western North Carolina, I find my experiences of extreme sports (of which I’ve only mentioned one of the many) are coming back to teach me their lessons in extraordinary ways.
The Surfaris 1963 Wipe Out! marked my childhood, and still does. This song would come to mind if I could foresee that in the next seconds there was going to be a cataclysmic wipe out (rarely, but it did happen!). I laugh now, when this song comes to mind, and I think of the way it seems that I have now, in the present day, catastrophically wiped out from a worldly point out of view – merely being a hermit – knowing, however, that I’m still flying through the air, at the level of the tree tops, crosses really. Totally awesome! This is what our Lord has provided. Death defying, really. Rather exhilarating this extreme sport of trusting completely in the Lord as He provides the circumstances and draws us through them, drags us through them to Himself.
By the way, did I ever mention that there was beatitude in the beatitudes? Hah!
Filed under Beatitudes, Just me
“I am what you will be!
I was what you are!”
Don’t forget it.
Not even for a second.
Tempus fugit. Time flies!
Memento mori. Remember death!
Filed under Beatitudes
Clever meditations on the paradoxes of the beatitudes are cute. But they’re nothing at all compared to actually beginning to experience the beatitude promised by our Lord in the beatitudes. Totally awesome. Totally.
One winter day St. Francis was coming to St. Mary of the Angels from Perugia with Brother Leo, and the bitter cold made them suffer keenly. St. Francis called to Brother Leo, who was walking a bit ahead of him, and he said: “Brother Leo, even if the Friars Minor in every country give a great example of holiness and integrity and good edification, nevertheless write down and note carefully that perfect joy is not in that.”
And when he had walked on a bit, St. Francis called him again, saying: “Brother Leo, even if a Friar Minor gives sight to the blind, heals the paralyzed, drives out devils, gives hearing back to the deaf, makes the lame walk, and restores speech to the dumb, and what is still more, brings back to life a man who has been dead four days, write that perfect joy is not in that.”
And going on a bit, St. Francis cried out again in a strong voice: “Brother Leo Continue reading
Filed under Beatitudes
This is the Mount of the Beatitudes, a plain, if you will, that’s as high as any mountain.
If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series on the beatitudes, click the category “Beatitudes” and start from the beginning! No repeated info. One beatitude builds on the others!
Behold! The beatitude of beatitudes, which has its own extended instructions and explanations, and so many nuances…
Blessed are you whenever they may heap insults upon you, and may hunt [you] down, and may speak — bearing false witness — all sorts of evil against you on account of me! Rejoice and exult, for your reward is great in the heavens, for thus do they hunt down the prophets who are before you.
This passage is full of aorists and aorist subjunctives. An aorist is a verb without boarders of time (past, present, future), which must be supplied by the context. However, we are here thrown so deeply into the family of faith that past, present and future melt together in the ardent flames of the Heart of our Lord: the entirety of the Mystical Body of Christ is before us, in front of us… we behold in our presence all the members of that Mystical Body who enjoy the transcendent joy of blessedness. We see the prophets being hunted down as if in the present tense… and it is all present tense for Mary’s Son, and for us in Him. And just as we rejoice in their fidelity to the Son of Mary, so they rejoice to see our fidelity in adversity, our rejoicing even though we may well be without benefit of a good reputation, even though we may well lack freedom in this world.
In our fallen human nature, we are tempted to shun those upon whom insults have been heaped, whose who no longer enjoy a good name, fearing that we will be besmearched by way of association, you know, the old condemn that damn Jesus for eating and drinking with those damned sinners kind of thing. That’s what we’re tempted to do. Can we look further into the reality of what’s going on? Few can. Sure, some can congratulate themselves for eating and drinking with those they imagine to be below their own social standing, but very, very few can stand beside the one who is falsely accused, who has insults hurled at him from all directions, who is utterly alone, abandoned by all, with all fleeing just as all the apostless fled from Calvary.
No matter. All is offered also for their sanctification! You have to understand that this is the thing about this beatitude: there is beatitude! There is transcendent joy which is not dependent on external reputations or freedoms, but on being a member of the family of faith, rejoicing with the prophets in the present tense, with the prophets being all those who lived the faith in whatever circumstances, and were faithful in adversity. The betrayal of such insults, of such removal of freedom — which our Lord Himself suffered by the way… — is impossible for us to endure if we stare at the betrayal, especially betrayal wrought be friends, by those we’ve tried to help, by those who, before God and man, should and do know better, but choose to remain aloof, to run away. We are not to stare at the horror, but simply look to Jesus as the littlest of Mary’s children.
You have to know that this has to happen this way, in all justice, all the insults, and the bearing of false witness. Like the Master, so the disciple. No good deed goes unpunished! Our Lord will treat those around us, if they lack any faith at all, like He did Pharaoh, hardening their hearts even while they congratulate themselves on being ever so very nice! Since our Lord is the one who, in all justice (aimed in the long run at mercy), blinds them, it is only the Lord who can unblind them. Prayer is key. But this can only, only be done by those who rejoice in this transcendent, God-given joy, this beatitude.
The “timing” of this beatitude is confirmed, as with other beatitudes, not only by the present tense blessedness of those who suffer so horrifically (which transcendent joy can only come from our Lord who is in Heaven), but also because of the present tense of right now having our great reward in the heavens… present tense… yes, even while we are simultaneously still suffering on this earth in all these horrific ways. We are already beginning to rejoice with the great prophets who were hunted down and tortured and put to death, and not only in the past, but also in the present, in the future.
We are encouraged by their faithfulness because we see them going to their martyrdom, with this intercession of their very lives thrusting us on our knees before Mary’s Son, whom she beheld on the Cross from the perspective of every time, from the beginning, as the Woman in Genesis 3,15, then as the Woman of Cana, then as the Woman under the cross, and finally as the Woman who is the symbol of the Church, the Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, crowned with twelve stars… In this beatitude, we share that timeless perspective and present tense beatitude with her. Faithfulness in extreme adversity is its own reward, which is timeless, indeed, eternal. We are just so very much in the midst of the Holy Family… Well… before this great mystery of the enthusiasm and joy to be found in the Holy Family, I am rendered speechless. Perhaps that’s a good thing for a hermit!
O.K. One last note: There is a nuance Jesus adds here: “…on account of me.” You have to know that the only one on this earth who will likely know that all this abuse being hurled at one is because of having witnessed to the truth and charity of Jesus among us will be the very one who is suffering all the abuse. Those hurling the abuse will likely either discount the importance of Jesus (little do they know), or will have a different idea of Jesus altogether, and think that they are serving Him by abusing you. In this way, one comes to know those words of Jesus on the Cross: Ηλι ηλι λεμα σαβαχθανι; “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27,46). But this speaking so directly to our Heavenly Father through, with and in His Son, as one with Jesus, is perfect joy, perfect beatitude. We learn to love all as He loves all. We learn to become perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, the sum total of all the beatitudes.
Filed under Beatitudes, martyrdom, Persecution
If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series on the beatitudes, click the category “Beatitudes” and start from the beginning! No repeated info. One beatitude builds on the others!
I just love that pefect passive participle in Greek. The only way to translate it correctly is rather clumsy, but rather exhilerating if the truth of my heart be told:
Blessed are the δεδιωγμένοι! which means rather precisely: Blessed are those perfectly continuing to be perfectly persecuted!
Hah! LOL! I just absolutely love that!
I once knew a certain Cardinal (I’ve personally known many!), who boasted that he never once in his life had a disagreement with anyone, never anyone upset with him. Yikes! That’s not the kind of thing I would boast about. Such cynics think that being persecuted is a sign of weakness. This Cardinal in particular said that Jesus’ crucifixion was a failure. He also said that Blessed John Paul II being in a wheelchair was – get this – an embarrassment to the entire Church in front of the whole world, not realizing that his example in suffering was a great blessing for all those who suffer, including me, for I was also in a wheelchair for quite a while. The cross of our Lord is a victory of our Lord’s love for us. The continuing faithfulness of those who suffer is a victory of our Lord’s love for us. Heaven will be so wonderful! What we preach, Christ Jesus and Him crucified, is a sign of contradition to the ways of the world, the flesh and the devil. If no one ever takes issue with what we preach, with what we do, with who we are… could there possibly be something wrong with what we preach or do, or with who we are? Could it be that we not with our Lord, but against Him?
The cynics, however, you know, the power brokers of self-congratulation, who stomp on others to lift themselves up… those cynics say this:
“What our Lord said about His disciples fleeing from one town to the next does not, cannot apply to us today. We’re nice! Persecution doesn’t happen to nice people like us! We’ve moved on since the time of Jesus! We’re better than they were. WE. ARE. NICE!”
But our Lord says:
“Blessed are those perfectly continuing to be perfectly persecuted!”
I almost want to dance around in my little hermitage before the Lord in transcendent joy…. O.K. I just did! Now, let’s see what this blessedness is all about!
Remember, this is present tense, transcendent joy amidst persecution right now. There is a hint about the source of this blessedness, which is, of course, not the persecution itself. Persecutions are just annoying. It’s the bit about “for the sake of righteousness” that is important. This righteousness is about knowing and doing the will of our dear Heavenly Father, keeping the commandments and just being faithful, His little children, His little flock, in the midst of the circumstances of our day to day lives, circumstances which He either wills, if they are good, or permits for our benefit, if they are evil, knowing that He can and will draw good out of the evil if we cooperate with Him in His grace, with His life within us, depending utterly on Him. That’s righteousness. We don’t put ourselves forward as righteous. We look to Him as the only righteous one, who provides that righteousness to us, He being, yes, just so good and just so kind. We don’t deserve any of this friendship with Mary’s Son, our Lord Jesus, and receiving His gift of friendship is part of this joy. The joy is accentuated when we see ever so clearly that we would cave before any persecution at all, and watch how, in the midst of persecution, He holds us up, having us continue to be faithful. We find, in joy, that this is utterly, totally awesome. We watch the majesty of His priesthood in our lives. The majesty! He walks among us, amidst all the persecution, still bearing the wounds on His hands and feet and side, in His Heart…
“For theirs is the Kingdom of the Heavens.”
I mean, it’s not that we still don’t have free will after being perfectly continuing to be faithful amidst perfectly continuing persecutions. It’s not that we can’t still choose to sin. It’s just that the transcendent joy of blessedness becomes such an attraction, the life of Jesus within us, and so close does Jesus keep us to Himself, that He can’t but help say that the Kingdom of the Heavens belongs to us already, so happy is He with His knowledge that we will one day join Him soul and body in heaven, where the rejoicing will be at fever pitch, where the grace we now enjoy will shine out as His own glory. Yikes! Jesus is proud of us! Double yikes!
Filed under Beatitudes
If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series on the beatitudes, click the category “Beatitudes” and start from the beginning! No repeated info. One beatitude builds on the others!
Peacemakers know what war is. War is hell. Always.
After Jesus made peace between ourselves in God with the completion of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on that hell (and heaven) of Calvary, and just after the soldier thrust the spear into His side, His Heart, sundering that Heart of peacemaking unity so as to bring us to be one with Him, it is just then that the soldier, stepping back as the blood and water flowed over him, said, “Truly this was the Son of God.”
The Son of God… though He called Himself the Son of man. The more we tried to prove that He was but a mere human being, the more we saw that He was a Divine Man, a God-Man, the only God-Man. The more we spit upon Him, mocked Him, stripped Him, scourged Him, crowned Him with thorns, throwing the instrument of His torture and death on Him, and finally executing Him, the more we then saw the strength of divine love, of divinity in Him: How good and kind, going through all this… for us…
All the cynics – those who find their security in keeping the status quo, those who are politically correct, those who cower before any true evangelization, those for whom religion is congratulating themselves on being consensus builders of the absolute lowest common denominator, on not rocking the boat, on not offending people (to the detriment of everyone’s eternal salvation) – think that peacemaking is all about the absence of doctrine and morality (which is to be merely privately upheld, if at all), a muzzling of those who cannot but speak of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
But did not our Lord and God, Mary Immaculate’s Son, say that He did not come to bring peace, but the sword? Yes, that is what He said. Who are we to think that He is an idiot for saying such a thing, and for His putting these words into practice, with His words being sharper than any two edged sword? We are the damnedest of fools if we think He is an idiot, especially by proving our foolishness by actions of sweeping under the carpet anything that would ever rightly and wonderfully cause friction with anyone, ignoring the fact, perhaps maliciously, that all and sundry may just trip on that now bulging carpet and go tumbling down, perhaps right to hell.
But Father, but Father! If you poke your head up to speak, it’ll be cut off! If you speak words of contradiction [love and truth always being a contradiction of the ways of the world, the flesh and the devil], then you’re sure to be crucified! Don’t do it! BE NICE! BE NICE! JUST. BE. NICE!
As the Master, so the disciple. Those who are peacemakers, truly, are to be sacrificed, as was the Son of God, the Son of man, the God-Man. The true peacemakers become the sons of God in The Son of God.
The true peacemakers, like the Son of God, will not on this earth be called sons of God. That will be for later, in heaven, where they will shine with the glory of the Son of God Himself.
As was the case with the Son of God, the peacemakers on this earth, speaking fearlessly of truth and charity, will be called inept, non-consensus-builders, those who have to be marginalized, despized, hated, treated as criminals, the scum of the earth, the off-scouring of the world, the worst examples of being religious. They will cynically be called cynics for speaking the truth with charity.
The true peacemakers, however, know blessedness in all this already upon this earth. The more they are not called the sons of God, but rather the sons of Satan (and this for saying and doing what is right, for truly being with Jesus), the more they know, with transcendent joy, with blessedness, their unity with the Son of God, how they are being brought into that Heart of unity which was sundered for us…
The only way a peacemaker can truly be a peacemaker in the eyes of God is to have his heart united with that Sacred Heart, which brought peace by the very sword which pierced His own Heart. Not so much cor ad cor loquitur (Heart speaks to a heart), but cor cum cordis loquitur (Heart speaks with a heart), for cum cordis is con-cord, that is, concord, that is, peace, no? Yes. Mary’s Son is just that good, just that kind, The Peacemaker…
Filed under Beatitudes
If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series on the beatitudes, click the category “Beatitudes” and start from the beginning! No repeated info. One beatitude builds on the others!
Purity of heart and seeing God. Makes sense.
But the transcendent joy, the blessedness, is already present: “Blessed are…” = present tense, even though the seeing of God is in the future, in heaven, of course. Not even the Immaculate Conception, but only her Divine Son, Jesus, enjoyed the blessed vision of the Trinity (of which He is the second Person!) whilst walking upon this earth, or hanging on the cross above it.
So, how is it that such blessedness of seeing God can begin here? There must be something rather special about being pure of heart.
First of all, the word in Greek for purity is where our word “catharitic” as in “a cathartic experience” comes from: “The event was so dramatic, I was totally drained, but that was a good way for me to forget all my worries. Really cathartic!” = cleansing. So, there’s a sense of having been cleansed, a purity that was provided by something impure being taken away.
Here, in this beatitude, this having-been-cleansed-purity refers not to psychological catharsis, but to purity of soul, of spirit, of heart. Yet, the two are intertwined a bit, for we are soul and body, no?
In the book of the prophet Ezekiel 11,19 (RSV) we read about our Lord’s promise:
And I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.
In getting rid of our stony hearts, we would like spiritual hearts, no? That’s not good. Our Lord’s ways are above our ways. He provides a heart of flesh, just as He did for Himself. Why? Because a spiritual heart cannot suffer the way a heart of flesh can suffer. Our Lord’s heart was pierced through, but only after it had already been literally broken (as the Doctor of Calvary says) by way of a massive heart attack in the Garden of Gethsemane, because of which our Lord literally sweat blood for us.
The purity of heart our Lady enjoyed, being immaculately conceived, and that of our Lord, did not permit them to escape the hell of this world. They saw it all the more clearly.
We, having been conceived in original sin, are so blind to the reality about what our Lord saved us from, and we therefore cannot see clearly all the good that He has done for us. In being forgiven by Him, we are filled with sanctifying grace, but He wants us to agree to see reality the way it is. He wants us to love Him with our free will. He wants us to say, “Yes, Lord, I will be generous enough with the truth of the reality of our redemption — by way of Your grace — so that I might learn how good and kind You really were to reach into this hell of darkness with you light of glory, and save us, bringing all the darkness and hell on Yourself so as to have the right in justice to have mercy on us. With patience, gentleness, little by little, the Lord opens our eyes, unblinds us, removes ever so slowly the fear we have of this tremendous, overwhelming reality of who we all are before God. So…
Being pure of heart doesn’t at all mean that our hearts are free of the darkness and hell of this world, though we are then His littlest children, rejoicing with His life within us. Instead, being pure of heart means that we can see reality all the more cleary, who we all are before God. Such a fright! But also such transcendent joy, for we then can be about rendering to our Lord the humble thanksgiving which is true religion. The paradox is that the more clearly we see, the more hell of Calvary we see, the more we see the glory of the Lord’s tender love for us on the cross. Inpurity of heart, we can even stand, like John, next to the Blessed Mother, there, under the cross.
It is there, under the cross, through the darkness, through the hell, that we begin to see God: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God.” And when it is time for us to enter heaven, where we will have the joy of humbly thanking Him with full understanding – knowing as we are known – it is then that we will fully see God, and see with such clarity His goodness and kindness. Amen!
But what if we have been impure in any way? What about arrogance, lust, stomping on others? What about… you name it. Are we lost? Damaged (as non-U.S.A. English speaking countries) horrifically – stupidly — call weakness?
Rather, with repentance, conversion, turning to the Lord, we can love with the love which He provides, and be forgiven much. Our Lord absolutely delights in forgiving us and bringing us to Himself.
Confession just so sets us on the right course, and just so opens our eyes to His goodness and kindness, having us look to Him, though we also know our weakness in this earthly body. But this pushes us to look just to Him, no? Yes! Our Lord uses all this to have us look to Him. To Him be praise and glory and honor forever and ever.
Filed under Beatitudes
If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series on the beatitudes, click the category “Beatitudes” and start from the beginning! No repeated info. One beatitude builds on the others!
This beatitude is the first one which might at first glance of the Greek phraseology seem to be rather restrained, blunted, not quite up to par with the others. Let’s do a pendantic translation of what our Lord spoke:
Blessed are those providing what is desperately needed by another, for they will have what they desperately need provided to them.
That, of course, is already quite a lot. It takes giving of ourselves to help someone out. Without God’s grace, we don’t like to do that without some self-serving motivation of self-congratulations, or seeking the approval of others, or lusting after that “good feeling” that one gets when helping someone in need. If that’s all we’re after, we will almost immediately get donor-fatigue syndrome, for we will tire of our own hypocrisy. Turn the channel. Finad another distraction. And then we’ll get depressed and upset and frustrated with life altogether… right?
Christ Jesus, of course, is demanding pure motivations in all this mercy. Yikes! How to do this if we don’t have it in us to do this? Are we just to be bribed with a future reception of mercy? Is there is really a present blessedness in such self-sacrifice? I mean, blessedness doesn’t come from any action that we might do. To be blunt about it, filling the desperate need of another is sacrifice that’s not, in itself, going to make anyone happy, certainly not transcendentally joyful, that is, blessed.
So, is one blessed only because there is a promise of having our own desperate need met ["...for mercy will be provided to them."] when we need it most, say, at the hour of death, when we desperately need the gift of the grace of final perseverance? I mean, Jesus does say that there will be a time for all of us in our own futures when we will have a desperate need for which we cannot now prepare. Our need will have to be fulfilled, and this is a promise of His that our desperate need will be fulfilled. This is not just a material need (for no one can prepare for this), but a spiritual need that will be common to all our futures.
Being happy about the future fulfillment of a promise of our Lord is surely part of being blessed now – for hope is so very important in our lives — but the thing is that this blessedness starts now… present tense, a transcendal joy which is more than is to be entirely had with being content with a promise about something in the future. Of course, true hope is discerned when there is presently a partial realization of that for which one hopes. But in this case, in this beatitude, it is not one’s present needs which are to be met in the future, but one’s future needs which are to be met in the future. Right now, one has the wherewithal to help another. So where does that blessedness come from? What is it that makes the foundation of the realization of hope for the future so real in our lives right now that we have this transcendental joy, this happiness which has such deep currents running through every aspect of our lives on all levels and in every way? And perhaps, after all, this present blessedness might, in the end, have something to do with our own needs being met in the future. But how can that be?
The word for mercy in this beatitude, referring to us, is ἐλεήμων, which is today used in Italian for almsgiving. You can see that word on the almsgiving buckets of parish churches, for example. This is the kind of almsgiving the Fatima children would run to give to those poorer off than themselves, often giving their lunches, whatever they had, giving until it hurt, and hurt badly. When someone is in desperate, immediate need, this kind of giving is important. If you were on the receiving end, you would know this. If people had tossed a penny or two at the Soubirous family, I bet that almost half of Saint Bernadette’s familiy would not have died because of the wretched state in which they lived. Probably people thought that they weren’t worth a penny or two, for they lived in an abandoned jail cell whose only window opened on to a mountain of manure. It was dark and dank and stank to high heaven. Don’t be scandalized now, but they were the “shit family” and the little saint was called by everyone in town the “little shit”… la petite merdeuse. Who’s going to give her anything? Think hard about this…
Severely condemned by the more up-to-date Marxist-priest-theologians was the great Mother Teresa of Calcutta. It was said that her taking care of the poor, often just being with them in their last dying moments in a gutter full of sewage, was not only useless, but detrimental to the fixing of the big picture, which, they insisted, needed such images of misery in order to provoke the violence of the masses against the powers that be. But she knew that individual love for someone in desperate need was of immediate importance. Go ahead and fix the structures of broken society, justly, but let me help this man die with love and hope, overwhelmed with goodness and kindness!
One can sometimes see the exasperation in the parishes of Rome. This sign tacked to the door of a church says that professional begging is not sincere, and that one should visit the local equivalent of Catholic Charities if one wants to do something about anything. I’m thinking that poor father has no imagination for what could be done from his own rectory. 
He must have been influenced by the more extreme of liberation theology antics, such as this one, saying that almsgiving is not the answer. Sure, there are gangsters, but begging like this can be the immediate answer to an individual’s desperate need. Everyone has a story. Some are professional “stories”. Others are real. It doesn’t take long to figure it out. Individuals are not ”units”; they are people. Honestly! Can we no longer help someone who is in desperate need of assistance, right here, right now? Do we just say, have a nice day and keep warm and well fed and then take off? What if, say, a youngster is on the streets of New York? A run-away. Most are pimped-off within 24 hours. Most die within two weeks of mistreatment. Are they professional beggers for their first few hours. Sure they are. But they also need help. Can we listen?
On this last point, a bit of advice about just how bad it can get… One does have to beware of the street-mafia groups, which are rife in Italy and pretty much everywhere else. I remember seeing a rather frightening number of little children in Calcutta who had hands or feet cut off, begging on the streets. Many had homemade skateboards to roll about on, or long sticks to hug lest they fall. They looked pitiable. That was the point. The street-mafia would steal children from one part of the city, bring them to other, chop off their limbs and, as they did with one little boy, put a tin begging plate in his mouth and make him crawl like a dog, he having had both hands and feet chopped off. I don’t see anything wrong with putting such children in an orphanage while beating the living day-lights out of the thugs! A good almsgiving, that.
While I’m at it, should businesses not provide a living wage to their workers, taking into consideration the number of children a family has? This is justice, not almsgiving… But how many have been made beggers because of a lack of justice. Sometimes people get a bit uppety about people in misery, saying that it’s all their own fault, but at the same time steal from their employees, making sure that they are turned out on the street… There are a few rich people who now find themselves on the street. Not many, though. Lots of tycoons sadly commit suicide when they go bankrupt. How silly to equate money with life. It’s an eternal mistake. We cannot serve both God and mammon.
But back to the original question about how to be blessed presently with mercy being provided to those in desperate, immediate need…
There is another word for mercy in the Gospels that is not used here, but is only used for Christ Jesus. That word describes something much more far-reaching than “merely” fulfilling the desperate need of another (if that can be described as “merely”!). The word, the verb, actually, in its conjugated form, is ἐσπλαγχνίσθη, as found, for instance, in Luke 15,20, where the father, seeing his prodigal son, is filled with compassion, that is, mercy. Mercy is misericordia or misery of heart, the misery of the other which one brings into one’s own heart so as to fulfill that need as if it were one’s own need. No transference here or other such rubbish. The other’s need is our need in the one Mstical Body of Christ. At any rate, this ἐσπλαγχνίσθη is translated slavisly as having had one’s heart sacrificed. Imagine that. The father’s heart was, as it were, sacrificed for his son. Jesus’ heart was sacrificed for us. That’s His kind of mercy, misery of heart, which is so good and kind!
Now then, if we are to do anything with a pure motivation, it is to be done with the grace of God, He uniting our hearts to His own, sacrificed Heart, broken open, pierced through.
It is that unity with Jesus which provides present blessedness and the reality behind the promise of mercy being provided for us when, in the future, we will indeed be in extreme need. This is the reality behind the present partial realization of the hope we have for the future. We are already with Jesus now in this mercy that we provide in His grace, by way of His sacrificed Heart. Are we not to remain with Him in our final moments? Are we not to be with Him in heaven? This is not a dumbed-down beatitude after all. We are here being lifted into the very Heart of our Lord and Savior, Mary Immaculate’s Son.
Now, just to say, if we do not know anyone in desperate need, emotionally, spiritually, physically… then we need to take serious stock of our lives and see in what ways we’ve gone way, way, way out of our ways NOT to take note of those who are in desperate need. If we want to be blessed now, united to the sacrificed Heart of Jesus, we had better open our eyes, depending on the grace of our Lord, for of ourselves we are just so blind. We are to be merciful just as mercy has been shown to us, and then we will also have the greatest mercy shown to us at the moment of death. It’s eternity we’re talking about. Think about it. Do something. Plan for it now. Then do it. Then, go to heaven! What blessedness! Jesus is just that good, just that kind… Truly. Give it a try. You’ll know it to be true.
Filed under Beatitudes
If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series on the beatitudes, click the category “Beatitudes” and start from the beginning! No repeated info. One beatitude builds on the others!
Those who are hungering and thirsting for righteousness in their own lives are — in that very act of hungering and thirsting, in that very anguish of soul and body (for this involves the entirety of who we are) — already experiencing the righteousness of God in their own lives. It’s not a future tense thing in this case, so, that means that this beatitude is not about that. It’s about hungering and thirsting for what God knows to be just and good to be manifest in the lives of everyone here on this earth. Ain’t gonna happen here for everyone, is it? No. Not even for our Lord, who was crucified by the unjust, by those lacking in the righteousness He Himself would provide to them in virtue of that very act of injustice He suffered, having the right in justice to have mercy on us for taking on what we deserve although He was innocent: Father, forgive them… And in this way He provides righteousness.
The extremity of our desire for righteousness, grinding us down to the very core of our being, starving and thirsting to death without this righteousness upon this earth, is answered by our Lord with His provision for us of Himself by way of His Body and Blood, the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, literally sating our hunger and thirst by being united with His hunger and thirst for us being sanctified in righteousness.
But is it not true that we are to help each other out? Some are way ahead of us, some way behind. But we can always help all these to know Him who is Righteousness, no? We want to share the greatest love of our lives with others, no? This rather in-your-face friendship with our Lord has to be shared with others, no? But everyone has free will, and only come to the Lord at different times, so that we are always in a bit of anguish, of hungering and thirsting.
So, the future tense: We will be utterly sated. We will see it all in heaven. Everyone there will be righteous, perfectly following the will of Mary’s Son, in all goodness and kindness. The rejoicing, the blessedness, will be at fever pitch. But the blessedness is in the present tense. It all starts here, first of all with our own righteousness. Then we want to help others know our Lord more.
A good first step in all this is ourselves hungering and thirsting for righteousness so much that we not only go to confession ourselves, regularly, but we encourage, even bring others to confession with us. — “Hey, I’ll buy you lunch across town.” And while going, you say, “Let’s just stop in here for just a second. I have to talk with the good padre.” You go to confession. You pray for your friend to take the opportunity, but no more. A good example was set. That good example might be taken when you’re not there, even if you get ribbed for having done what you did for quite a while. When people are following their consciences formed by the Church, they will also follow the natural law in their public, even political lives, will they not? Be not afraid. Go to confession and save the world!
Filed under Beatitudes
If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series on the beatitudes, click the category “Beatitudes” and start from the beginning! No repeated info. One beatitude builds on the others!
Usually we read about just how happy the meek are, or the gentle, something like: “Happy are those who are nice!” Sigh… no!
“Friendly” in English is directly related to the word in question in Greek. This is about friendship, true friendship, not self-serving rubbish, not nicey-niceness, but true friendship, friendship that will come to bat for you when you’re beaten down, but friendship that will whoop you upside the head without hesitation when you’re being stupid, friendship that is welcoming, but friendship that knows who is who and respects that. This kind of friendship is what the Lord meant about Himself when He called Himself our friends, calling us His friends, after He rose from the dead and met with those who had… run… away… How good and kind our Lord is. What a good Friend He is.
The friendly will inherit the land because they are the only ones who are welcoming of new life from natural conception onwards. Justice wins out. Truth wins out. Respect for life wins out. Agressive wars can kill many, but the arrogant will soon die as well. And it is those who are welcoming of life who will win the day. Always. A bit of a future tense is necessary here, but that future tense is also a promise, a prediction, a prophesy. The extreme liberation theologians for the day would have been rather upset with our Lord!
Generally speaking, those who are friendly, who are welcoming of life, are poor, because they have large families. They welcome life into their lives. They are friendly.
Generally speaking, those who are friendly are the ones people turn to in time of need, in time of distress, in time of their need for advice. The friendly, in this way, direct how things go in their local communities, in their lands, in this way and that, no? People recognize true friends, and flock to them. How blessed are the friendly! Yes, a transcendent joy to be a true friend to one and all. A true friend first of all keeps up his friendship with Jesus, who is good and kind, The Friend.
Filed under Beatitudes
If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series on the beatitudes, click the category “Beatitudes” and start from the beginning! No repeated info. One beatitude builds on the others!
Anyone who has loved anyone who has passed away knows that grieving comes from love. It is the experience of the loved one seeming to have ripped one’s heart right out of one’s chest so as to bring it with them on their rather momentous journey. But doesn’t this manifest the depth of the love that is there, with the one so devastated on this earth looking to the one who has done all the heart ripping out of the chest thing?
Grieving is very much a present tense thing. It’s all right here, right now. Time doesn’t necessarily heal all things, does it? The scars of the heart being ripped out of the chest thing can be reopened at any time, right?
Our Lord is very, very present to those who grieve, for they love, which is why they are grieving. And Jesus is love. He is with them.
The second part of this sentence, the explanation — “for they shall be visited” — is frequently translated as comforted, helped, aided, and so on. The word in Greek, which is used for the Holy Spirit, comes from paraclete, that is, to be called next to [someone]. The Holy Spirit is called upon us by the Father and the Son. In this case of the beatitudes, the visitor is not specified.
Note that this second part is in the future tense. We can seem a bit unconsolable here upon this earth at times, can’t we? Grieving can be pretty intense, much like the truest love. Are not all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ of whatever time and place with us, grieving with those who grieve and rejoicing with those who rejoice? We must not forget that we, who belong to the Church Militant, fighting to keep our faith amidst a perverse generation, also have the Church Suffering in purgatory and the Church Triumphant in heaven with us, visiting us. This truth sinks in only slowly, however, for the wounds of the heart-being-ripped-out-of-one’s-chest experience can be rather raw. Yet, the truth, the life of the family of faith does take hold of us all the more deeply.
Jesus spoke these words also to Mary, His Immaculate Mother, for she would see her Son be tortured to death and buried.
But then she was visited, consoled, comforted. Very. Awesome. That. Such depth of grieving. Such depth of love. Such a visitation! Jesus is risen. He is truly risen!
Filed under Beatitudes
Sometimes my fellow Scripture scholars get a bit carried away with the description of where Jesus spoke the beatitudes. Was it a mountain? Was is a field? My question is this: why can’t you have a field on a mountain? Those who know anything about the mountains know that there are very often fields on mountains. Perhaps they are consummate city slickers! Pictured is the traditional site of the beatitudes, both a field and a mountain: Just look how high you are up in perspecitve in this picture. Rather breathtaking, isn’t it?
In Greek, the word we translate as blessed refers to a transcendent happiness, a spiritual joy, nothing ephemeral or transient about this blessedness. It is enduring, through thick and thin, right through death, from our turbulent lives on this earth right to eternal rejoicing in heaven in the next life.
In the first part of this sentence, in Greek, the main clause, there is no verb, or rather we have an understood verb in the present tense. “Blessed are the poor in spirit…”
The dependent clause — “for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens” — is also in the present tense.
The plural “heavens” is a way of speaking of the singular heaven with, however, all of its various aspects. There are millennia of tradition behind this. Saint Paul also speaks of various levels of heaven, being caught up in them.
The word used for “poor” in Greek refers to a poverty which is total, utter desitution, in which one is entirely dependent on others. Of oneself, one is worthless, powerless, nothing.
Just stare at all that for a while.
First of all, how can anyone who is so poor, especially in spirit (how terribly, horrifically ghastly and dark!) be presently experiencing transcendent joy?
Second of all, isn’t heaven in like… you know… heaven? How is it that the eternal joy of heaven, the whole kingdom of heaven, mind you, which is most rich as opposed to poor, be available to those upon this earth, to us who are in the viator, or wayfarer state? Are not things different in heaven than on earth? Isn’t our hope that things in heaven are different than they are here on earth?
Knowing who we are before God, how dependent we are on Him because of the consequences of original and personal sin, is not a bad thing. Rather, it opens us up to the vast, eternal treasures of the mercy and love of God for us, who takes us to Himself if we follow up with His grace, also by His grace, to be in a state of humble thanksgiving before Him. This humble thanksgiving is the state of those who are in heaven. Of course, they are without the weaknesses we justly bear on this earth because of original and personal sin (this being our cross Jesus commanded us to carry, so as to look to Him all the more honestly). Sharing in this eternal joy already on this earth is surely one of the levels, if you will, of heaven, that we can already participate in here on earth.
The way to do this? The best way is regular confession. Do you want transcendent joy that no one can take from you, no matter what? Go to confession regularly. Blessed are you if you do. Truly. Jesus truly is good. Jesus truly is kind.
Filed under Beatitudes
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter.
All told, Masses offered for Benedict XVI came to 918.
י ב ר כ ך י ה ו ה ב ה ת א ם ל ת פ י ל ת מ ר י ם ה ק ד ו ש ה
May the Lord continue to bless you
according to the intercession of Mary Most Holy
