The Meek, Inheritors of the Earth

*Over the next several weeks, I will be reflecting on the beatitudes of Jesus.

~Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth~

The interesting thing about this beatitude is the promise Jesus makes to those who are meek. We know, for the most part, what it means to be meek. The meek person lives by a logic of gentleness. The meek person, no matter how serious the situation may be, never throws away their loving-kindness. [1] But Jesus says that the meek shall inherit the earth. What exactly does that mean? What are we saying when we say that the “people of the beatitudes” are the people who will become inheritors of the land?

Certainly Jesus’ promise has something to do with heaven. The meek, the gentle, are the kind of people who are inheritors of the “New Jerusalem.” But the Christian tradition has also insisted that, in this beatitude, Jesus is also talking about this world. There is a sense in which the meek are the true inheritors of this earth. What do we mean?

Let’s start by thinking of the opposite of meekness. I tend to think of the rise and fall of empires, of the coming and going of nations and dominions. There is, in the onward march of an invading army, the human attempt to possess the earth, to broaden the inheritance. This image of human strength ― to raise one’s flag over the earth ― stamps it with disharmony. In ancient times, most defeated populations were enslaved. Genghis Khan used to say that life’s greatest pleasure was in “vanquishing your enemies and robbing them of their wealth." When Caesar’s chariots pressed onward, he crushed and mangled the earth and its people. There was nothing gentle or meek about Caesar and his legions. 

Throughout history “Caesar” has always tried to dominate the land, to insist the land is really his dominion. But Caesars come and Caesars go. And that is precisely the point. The true inheritors of the earth ― the true possessors of that land ― are not the imperialists who’ve pillaged for it. In time, the empires have all fallen away. “The ones who remain,” Joseph Ratzinger once said, “are the simple, the humble, who cultivate the land and continue sowing and harvesting in the midst of sorrows and joys.” [2] The land does not belong to Caesar. The land does not belong to any person of power, no matter how much they say so. The land belongs to God. And that land is the inheritance, Jesus says, of the poor in spirit and of the meek. It is the inheritance of those who, at this moment, have been disinherited. Indeed, the story of a land is the story of its people ― the generations who’ve lived and worked upon it ― not the story of its conquerors and rulers.

It is no different today. I used to tell my students that, in spite of what might appear to be the case on the news, the real drama is not occurring out on the center stage of the world. The real drama is not occurring on your social media feeds. The real drama is happening in your heart. The world, right now, is going through an extraordinary time. It matters, of course, how world leaders react. You need to care about all that. But the highest drama of all is not how the Caesars will respond. The real question is this: how are you going to respond? To this virus? To this cultural moment’s questions about race? Are you becoming wiser? More just? More meek? Are we going to become people who truly see those around us who are hurting? Not just the ones on TV, five-hundred miles away, but are we going to see the people who are actually in our lives ― the ones we call friends and family ― and endure some harshness each day? Do you yet see that there are real people in your life in pain? Are these tumultuous days an invitation to see your poor-in-spirit a little better? An invitation to cultivate the small patch of your inheritance of earth? An invitation to be meek?

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~Anthony Rosselli (PhD cand., theology, University of Dayton) writes out of St. Luke and Ascension Parishes in Franklin County, Vermont. These columns are archived here.

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Endnotes:

[1] See the reflections on "Holy Meekness" in Dietrich von Hildebrand's Transformation in Christ (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2001), 407.

[2] Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007), 83.

Those Who Mourn

*Over the next several weeks, I will be reflecting on the beatitudes of Jesus.

~Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted~

We normally associate mourning with death: those who mourn, mourn their dead. We also associate Jesus’ beatitude ― “blessed are those who mourn” ― with death. “Blessed are those who mourn their dead. They shall be comforted. They shall experience the consolation of God. They shall see their loved ones again.” Something like that. This is not wrong. Jesus is, in part, talking about this kind of mourning. But he’s also talking about something much more fundamental. 

“Those who mourn” are not just those who have lost someone. In this case, those who mourn are those who look out at the world and grieve. Blessed are those who grieve for the world. “Woe to those who rest easy in Zion… who are not grieved over the ruin [of their brethren]” (Amos 6:1, 6). It is not a pleasant thing to say, but this world is a ruin ― not just today, in the midst of extraordinary turmoil, but all days. 

We live in a world scarred up by wounds and by pain. The scriptures call it a “valley of tears” (Ps 84:6). Everyday, we move among people who endure extraordinary suffering. Most of them hide it. But when our eyes pierce the façade and see all this, Jesus calls it a blessing.

“Those who mourn” are those who see that the world is not as it should be and weep for it. They see and mourn for those this world has discarded ― the elderly, the aborted, the racially oppressed, the immigrant. “Those who mourn” are blessed precisely because they know this is not the inheritance God left for humanity, and that things will someday not be this way.

On the other hand, in Luke’s gospel, Jesus reformulates this beatitude from the other direction. “Woe to you that laugh now,” he says. “You shall mourn and weep” (Lk 6:25). What startling and harsh words! Nobody has them hanging above their mantle. The point is this: you don’t want to be totally at home in this world. This is a world that runs by the logic of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (Deut 19:21). The cup of suffering runneth over here. If somehow you rest easy in this world, perfectly content as all manner of agonies and injustices stream by, then woe to you. Blessing comes, rather, in mourning and in lifting the burden from those this world has discarded.

One day, no one “shall hurt or destroy in all God’s holy mountain” (Is 11:9). One day, God will “wipe away every tear” (Rev 21:4). But that day has not yet come. And so Jesus says that the blessed ones are the ones who mourn, the ones who “hunger and thirst for righteousness.” But this is not the whole of the story. 

Jesus closes these very beatitudes by insisting his disciples also “rejoice and be glad” (Mt 5:12). It might be the case that the world has not yet been consummated, that there are one-thousand agonies at each moment. But, for the Christian, after Jesus has walked with us ― after God himself has mourned with us ― the whole story has been rewritten. Christians believe that, on account of Jesus, this heartbroken world “shall be comforted.” Even now, Jesus has left the aroma of redemption upon all things, especially upon our suffering, our mourning, and our weeping. [1] And so, for the Christian, there are so many more reasons for joy then there are for sadness. There is so much pain in the world, so much injustice. But the last word has been Jesus’ word. And so even if the Christian is never quite at home in this world, joy is nevertheless the decisive theme and rhythm of her life. [2] “Rejoice always!” Saint Paul wrote to the Philippians (Phil 4:4). “Rejoice always!”

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~Anthony Rosselli (PhD cand., theology, University of Dayton) writes out of St. Luke and Ascension Parishes in Franklin County, Vermont. These columns are archived here.

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Endnotes:
[1] See Luis Martinez, The Sanctifier (Boston: Pauline, 2003), 313-314.

[2] See Dietrich von Hildebrand, Transformation in Christ (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2001), 464.

The Poor in Spirit

*Over the next several weeks, I will be reflecting on the beatitudes of Jesus.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Without fail, when I taught the beatitudes each semester, some student would ask about the “poor in spirit.” “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Jesus says, “for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Who are the poor in spirit exactly? It’s a little clearer the other time Jesus talks like this, in Luke’s gospel ― “blessed are you poor” (Lk 6:20). We know who they are ― the poor ― even if we’re often unsure as to why they’re blessed.

There’s a temptation to think of poverty of spirit as a kind of timidity or small-spiritedness. There’s a temptation to think of the poor in spirit as a bunch of wimp-chickens. “Blessed are those you can hardly hear when they talk.” You’d be surprised how many people implicitly believe holiness has something to do with how loudly one speaks.

The poor in spirit are the broken of this world. Yes, they are the materially poor, the beggars, the laid off. But they are also the cast down. The anxious and the addicted. They are the heartbroken and alienated. They are the ones whose families have been taken away from them, “Rachel weeping for her children because they are no more” (Jer 31:15). The depressed. The seriously ill. Forgotten and beaten children. Les miserables. The poor in spirit are those who know nothing of this world’s joys. And painfully ― absurdly even ― Jesus says that they are blessed.

This is precisely what makes Jesus a shocking and radical figure. Recall that, when he finished this sermon, the text says “the crowds were alarmed at his teaching” (Mt 7:28). How is it that the world’s most broken can actually be blessed and fortunate?

Let’s exclude one solution straight away. There’s a temptation to think that, when God looks upon these poor in spirit and sees their misery, he will someday in this life wipe it all away and bless them. “Blessed are the poor in spirit because God will eventually dissolve their troubles and give them more than anyone else.” This is not what Jesus is saying. In fact, the Greek word he uses for “blessed” ― makarios ― implies that they are blessed because they are poor in spirit. Indeed, the poverty of spirit itself is somehow paradoxically blessed. It is precisely the place in which, to use Jesus’ words, one inherits the Kingdom of Heaven. There is no getting around the radicalness of Jesus. [1]

So what are we supposed to do with this? How is it that earthly misery is actually a blessing? How is it the place in which one inherits the Kingdom?

In short, when we are poor in spirit, we have nothing. When we are poor in spirit, we possess not a single one of this world’s joys. And so we must turn to the next world. We must turn to God. But most of the time ― for you and I, anyway ― we are not poor in spirit. Most of the time we enjoy the things of this world. We are happy to indulge its services. But the reason we are called blessed when we are poor in spirit is because it is only then that we actually see rightly. Indeed, when we are poor in spirit, that is the moment when it becomes all too clear that this world is devastated and broken and there is nothing that can save us except God. And that is a fundamental truth. And the reason this poverty of spirit is called blessed is because, at every other time ― when we are not poor in spirit ― we simply don't see it. The poor in spirit recognize that there is nothing in this world that can make one happy except God. But more often than not, we think that our jobs will make us truly happy. Or marriage. Or ice cream. Or not dying. Or some other thing besides God.

It's not that earthly goods are bad. They're good. They can be enjoyed "in God," so to speak. But they can't satisfy us in an ultimate sense. They can't save us or make us finally happy. When we are poor in spirit, we know this. Most of the time, though, we do not. Our familiarity with this world's comforts ― our attachment to them ― makes us forget that they won't take us very far. In short, the poor in spirit are blessed because they are the ones who recognize our deep dependence upon God and God alone.

Recall for a moment the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Recall the elder son’s anger at seeing a party thrown for his brother. “These many years I have served you and I never disobeyed your command; yet you never gave me a goat, that I might make merry with my friends” (Lk 15:29). What he wanted was a goat. “Son,” the father replied, “you are always with me. All that is mine is yours” (Lk 15:31). The father is not talking about his possessions: “You are always with me.” The son wanted a goat. “Forget the goat,” the father is saying, “you have me.”

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Jesus said, “theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” In the Kingdom of Heaven, everyone is a beggar, because everyone has given everything away. They’ve recognized how unsatisfying everything is that isn't God. This is what it means to be rich for Christians. This is the inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is what it means, as Saint Paul said, to “have nothing, and yet possess everything” (2 Cor. 6:10). And once one becomes poor of human things, one becomes rich with God. In the Kingdom, everyone has given away their goats. They have the Father. “Son. Daughter. You are always with me. And all that is mine is yours.”

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~Anthony Rosselli (PhD cand., theology, University of Dayton) writes out of St. Luke and Ascension Parishes in Franklin County, Vermont. These columns are archived here.

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Endnote:

[1] See Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy ― Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 1 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 183-184.

Beatitude

*Over the next several weeks, I will be reflecting on the beatitudes of Jesus.

The most interesting part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is the first word. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Blessed. In the original Greek, the word is makarios. It’s not an easy word to translate. “Happy are the poor,” you’ll find in some translations. Jesus begins each of the beatitudes with that word. “Blessed are those who mourn,” “blessed are the meek,” and so on. In Latin, the word is beati. “Beati misericordes” ― “blessed are the merciful.” Beati is where we get the word “beatitude.”

Usually, when someone hears the word “beatitude,” they think of these aphorisms of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount. But there is a second meaning to that word. Traditionally, “beatitude” has also referred to the experience of people in heaven. Indeed, “beatitude” describes the state of mind of someone who’s beholding the face of God. Theologians call this the “beatific vision.” The two meanings are linked. Yes, Jesus is describing to his followers something about what it means to live well in this world ― “blessed are the peacemakers, etc.” But he’s also talking about heaven. There is a reason Jesus only offers these beatitudes after he’s ascended a mountain. It is an ascent to heaven, and he is describing what it looks like to live in heaven. In short, the beatitudes describe how people are when they behold the face of God.

This is the great mystery of the beatitudes. They bridge heaven and earth. Indeed, what Jesus’ beatitudes reveal, above all, is that there is a way ― even in this world ― to access the life of the Blessed, the way of life that is promised in the life to come. Jesus reveals that this life is available to us here and now ― that beatitude is possible even in this life, even if “through a glass darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12). [1]

But here’s the strange and awful thing about the beatitudes. We've said that the beatitudes describe how people live ― the way they are, even ― when they behold the face of God. But look at the very first beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Luke's gospel is more blunt: “Blessed are you poor” (Lk 6:20) This is not the typical conception of heaven. We think of heaven as a becoming-rich. We say that so-and-so has “gone to their reward.” Even if we understand these rewards as spiritual realities, we still typically understand heaven as the accumulation of good experiences. 

On the contrary, when the scriptures describe the process of our final beatitude, it is not described as an accumulation of something but as a stripping away. In this same sermon, Jesus described the process of entering heaven as a paying of “every last cent” (Mt 5:26). Saint Paul mysteriously described the process of salvation as a “burning up” (1 Cor. 3:10-15). The New Testament depicts heaven not as a making-rich, but as a making-poor, a burning up. 

With respect to living in this world, Christianity offers the same logic. “I must become less,” John the Baptist said (Jn 3:30). The whole spirit of Christianity is about accumulating less of this world into your person: “Martha, Martha,” Jesus said, “you are anxious and troubled about many things.” It is the many-ness that is Martha’s problem. “One thing is needful” (Lk 10:41-42). What Martha needs is to have her many-ness stripped and burned away from her.

Americans in particular struggle with Jesus’ depiction of blessedness. We tend to think of blessedness in the images taught to us by the gospel of American consumerism. Blessedness means abundance. It means accumulating more. It means many-ness. My blessedness primarily has to do with my house, my clothes, my retirement, my Thanksgiving dinner. It means having and consuming. 'The reason we have all this is because we're blessed.' But it’s Amazon and Nabisco who have convinced us of this, not Jesus. 

Upon finishing the last beatitude, Jesus says that the "reward is great in heaven" (Mt 5:12). The reward is great. How certain are we that we know what he means? Americans are tempted into thinking that heaven is about more. Americans are tempted into longing for the heaven of Martha, for the heaven of many-ness. “Martha, Martha…. One thing is needful.” The Judeo-Christian tradition seems to suggest that, on the last day, when we look God in the face, we won’t find a God eager to pour out more and even tastier consumables for our hungry hearts to devour. It seems, rather, we’ll find ourselves not quite as hungry as we remembered. We will experience, I think, a different kind of hunger, and we will feel it with extraordinary acuteness. The Blessed, we are told, “hunger and thirst for righteousness.” And on that day, we are told, “they will be satisfied.” In heaven, the Blessed are not rich, but poor. They have become empty, and thus filled with God. They have, as John the Baptist hoped they would, “become less, so He would become more” (Jn 3:30).

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~Anthony Rosselli (PhD cand., theology, University of Dayton) writes out of St. Luke and Ascension Parishes in Franklin County, Vermont. These columns are archived here.

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Endnote:

[1] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II.69.2.

“The poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind" - 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Luke 14:1, 7-14
On a sabbath Jesus went to dine
at the home of one of the leading Pharisees,
and the people there were observing him carefully. ...
He told a parable to those who had been invited,
noticing how they were choosing the places of honor at the table.
"When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet,
do not recline at table in the place of honor. 
A more distinguished guest than you may have been invited by him,
and the host who invited both of you may approach you and say,
'Give your place to this man,'
and then you would proceed with embarrassment
to take the lowest place. 
Rather, when you are invited,
go and take the lowest place
so that when the host comes to you he may say,
'My friend, move up to a higher position.'
Then you will enjoy the esteem of your companions at the table. 
For every one who exalts himself will be humbled,
but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." 
Then he said to the host who invited him,
"When you hold a lunch or a dinner,
do not invite your friends or your brothers
or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors,
in case they may invite you back and you have repayment.
Rather, when you hold a banquet,
invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind;
blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. 
For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

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The Pharisees are always playing games with Jesus, always trying to trap him and prove his untrustworthiness. This week’s Gospel recounts a story that takes place on the Sabbath ― the day of rest. Before this day, the Pharisees had clashed three times with Jesus over the correct way to live out the Sabbath. So the tension is high when, on this particular Sabbath, Jesus is invited “to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees.” It’s anything but cordial; the text says they were “observing him carefully,” waiting for him to do something objectionable.

Jesus, ever the controversialist,  immediately obliges them. Though it’s left out of the Mass reading, as soon as Jesus arrives at the Pharisee’s house, he heals a man there with dropsy ― a disease that causes painful swelling. Now, according to the overwhelming majority of ancient rabbis, healing on the Sabbath is strictly forbidden. But think about what the Pharisees have done: in order to catch Jesus contradicting Jewish law, they’ve used a very ill man as bait. Let’s note that the man was not invited to the dinner ― the text says that, after he was healed, he left the party and went home. He was bait and nothing more. Immediately after this scene, the Pharisees begin to take their seats for dinner. And this is the moment ― when he sees them all taking “places of honor at the table” ― when Jesus offers his teaching about humility. 

Let’s look closely at Jesus’s words. As he watches the Pharisees file hierarchically into their places of honor, he suggests they do otherwise. But why? Here’s the reason he gives: “A more distinguished guest than you may have been invited… and the host … may approach you and say, ‘give your place to this man.’ …. Take the lowest place so that when the host comes to you he may say, “my friend, move up to a higher position.’” This is actually a common bit of advice within the Jewish tradition. In fact, Jesus is alluding to a passage from the Old Testament that every Pharisee at that dinner would have known. It’s a passage from the Book of Proverbs that outlines the proper etiquette should you find yourself dining with a king: “do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence…. It is better to be told, ‘come up here’ than to be put lower (Pr 25:6-7)....” For the Jews, these are simple manners, and up to this point, Jesus has not really said anything provocative. He’s simply reminding the Pharisees that there are certain counsels that mark a wise person. They would not have been too offended.

The original and more interesting teaching Jesus offers at this dinner comes near the end of our reading: “When you hold a ... dinner, do not invite your friends, or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors.... Rather … invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” Think about the context of this very dinner! Now things have become provocative! Who was the one person whose lack of an invitation to this dinner stands out vividly? The poor, disabled, broken man with dropsy who ― not invited to the dinner ― had been called upon to entrap Jesus! The Pharisees would very much have grasped the message.

So what, in total, has Jesus done with this little teaching about inviting people to dinner? He began by reminding the Pharisees that there are certain manners that mark proper Jewish dinner decorum. You should be careful not to overestimate your place in the hierarchy, lest you be embarrassed and are asked to step down. The Pharisees know this and would not have been provoked by such a comment. It’s what Jesus said next that was revolutionary: he reversed the order of the hierarchy. Instead of honoring the leaders among the Pharisees, the people who get seats of honor in Jesus’ kingdom are “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,” those who are not even welcome to stay on for dinner in the world of the Pharisees. Over and over Jesus insists that, in the Kingdom of God, “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.” At this dinner party, he provides a concrete example of what he means. 

Jesus has reordered the universe. He has instituted “manners” for the Kingdom of Heaven. For Christians, it must be the last who come first. Even if this doesn’t always literally refer to seats at a dinner table, it’s the broken who get places of honor in our lives. The poor, the displaced, the forgotten, those who have nothing with which to repay us, are the privileged recipients of our honor and our generosity. This is Christian “etiquette” ― simple manners. The modern world has been profoundly interested in overturning hierarchies, in flattening out social strata so that everyone is equal. Jesus’s vision is far more radical. He keeps hierarchy, but insists those at the bottom — the poor, broken, and disenfranchised — are the elites. Can I ask you to visualize for a moment the most broken person you know? Visualize the person in your life you’d most readily describe, to use Jesus’ words, as “poor, crippled, lame, or blind.” More than likely their poverty is not monetary. Perhaps it’s someone with an eating disorder, someone with acute depression, someone who’s terminally ill. Perhaps it’s someone who’s lost their job, or lost their family, or has been alienated by those around them. Hold this person in your mind for a moment. Where are they as you’re reading this? What is your role in their life? At what tables do they have seats of honor? Where do they sit at your table?

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