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Since "only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven" (see Matthew 19:23) Jesus called the poor in spirit blessed. We can say that the poor in spirit are those who are truly in the world but not of the world, using the things of the world while not being possessed by them (see First Corinthians 7:31). Such a one does not hoard her wealth as did the rich man who ignored Lazarus, or build silos to store up more excesses herself. Such riches as we do have are meant to be the the disposal and the service of the Kingdom. And insofar as we must do without material things we can still have the comfort that comes from being a part of God's Kingdom, assured that our deepest spiritual needs will always be met.
Blessed are they who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
The Lord himself is the "Father of compassion and the God of all encouragement". He himself is the one who fills us with encouragement when we mourn in order that "we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction" with the very gift God first gave to us. The world apart from God can do very little to provide comfort to those who mourn. Apart from God individuals can convey understanding and sympathy but they generally can't do much to change the harsh realities of life in a fallen world. But God himself is able to transform affliction into joy and death into resurrection. Our every affliction becomes an opportunity to learn to experience the comfort of God in a new way. This in turn helps us to become lights to a world that is afflicted, feels hopeless, and doesn't know where to turn.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the land.
Meekness is said to be power under control. It is the result of not forcing things, acting violently, or insisting on one's own way. In short it is the very opposite of the strategy that would seem to actually result in any kind of individual gain, much less inheriting the land. Yet when we don't insist on using our power to do things our way we can learn to perceive and cooperate with divine power. When we learn to root our choices in the divine power we will move past our own desperation and struggle and discover that the land is somehow mysteriously already ours. Similar to how it was not by their own strength that those of the exodus generation eventually conquered the promised land, we can only enter the spiritual promised land by following God's lead, by willing to be still and let him fight for us.
The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still (see Exodus 14:14).
Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness often seem to be anything but satisfied. And if such satisfaction could only come when every wrong was at last put to right they would have to wait until the return of the Lord in glory to truly experience it. But it seems that there is a sense in which they can discover a source of satiety even during this life, even amidst a fallen world. This can happen when they allow God himself to be the source of their nourishment, so that they can say that he "has filled the hungry with good things" (see Luke 1:53). They are then like Jesus himself, whose food was to do the will of his heavenly Father. It is fidelity and rather than success that disposes us to be fed by God in this way. It really can come to pass that the Eucharist both sates our deepest spiritual hungers and yet disposes us to seek even more ardently the transformation of the world around us.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Mercy only makes sense if it is available to everyone. On what grounds would we try to plea for mercy and yet condemn others? Since we all stand in need of mercy as sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God (see Romans 3:23) we are meant to desire mercy not only for ourselves but for the world. When God deigns to show us mercy he means to transform us into agents of mercy. The very idea that mercy could be constricted or contained, hoarded for oneself, is foreign to it. Mercy must flow through us if it is to truly be effective in us.
Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God.
Our hearts tend to become like car windshields after a long trip, covered with insects and bird excrement. It becomes hard to see things as they truly are through such a layer of accretion. On the journey of our spiritual lives we are meant to both avoid the paths that we know will tarnish our hearts with sin and to return again and again to the living water that can wash them clean. The point of this is not only to see the road ahead, but especially the destination, God himself. Only by seeing him can we truly and finally come to rest in him, for it is by seeing him that we are transformed.
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another (see Second Corinthians 3:18)
Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is (see First John 3:2).
Peacemakers are called children of God because they become like Jesus himself who established peace between God and humankind and created the possibility of true peace between peoples, the bond of peace which the Spirit himself brings about (see Ephesians 4:3). Jesus desires us to share this peace with the world, since it is peace that the world itself cannot give, just as he himself first shared it with us.
The most important thing is, as we have heard, to seek first the Kingdom of God, for when we do we will find that even persecutions, insults, and falsehoods spoken against us cannot compare to the greater joy of living lives rooted in God. It is then that we experience "all these things" being added to us (see Matthew 6:33), then that we "receive a hundredfold now in this time" (see Mark 10:30).
If something seems to be missing from our lives is it really missing? Or are we just looking in the wrong places, trying to draw water from cisterns that cannot hold water (see Jeremiah 2:13)? The wonderful thing about the beatitudes is that there is nothing to earn, no work that we must do to qualify. They are instead gifts that transform us from those with no foundation, tossed about but the circumstances of this life, to those whose foundations are built in a rock, Christ himself.
Look to him that you may be radiant with joy,
and your faces may not blush with shame.
When the poor one called out, the LORD heard,
and from all his distress he saved him.
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