Sunday
As we consider Jesus’s message today, we join those people on that hillside, grappling with the question of who we are now and who we want to become in the future.
—Brian McLaren
Monday
Poor in spirit means to live without a need for our own righteousness. It’s inner emptiness without a need to bolster our own reputation.
—Richard Rohr
Tuesday
Weeping over our sin and the sin of the world is an entirely different mode than self-hatred or hatred of others. The weeping mode, if I can call it that, allows us to bear the pain of the world without looking for perpetrators or victims.
—Richard Rohr
Wednesday
This feels like the secret Jesus is letting his listeners in on: the power we’re born into and the power we gain throughout our lives is a mirage. In the really real, power can only be shared.
—Micha Boyett
Thursday
While it may take a long time, our nonviolent persistence and truth-telling will eventually win out and bear the good fruit of justice. Truth is on our side; God is on the side of justice.
—John Dear
Friday
The Beatitudes remind us that blessing and justice are inextricably linked. If it’s blessing we want, then it’s justice we must pursue.
—Debie Thomas
Week Twenty-Seven Practice
Where Do You Seek Happiness?
Franciscan sister Patricia Jordan invites us to contemplate the Beatitudes as a way to transform our hearts:
A good starting place for the journey of discovery into your heart is the Beatitudes. One interpretation of Beatitude is happiness. Where do you seek happiness? In this answer lies a clue to the choices and challenges you may be required to face as you journey towards healing and wholeness. The Beatitudes do not deny our human instincts, emotions, thinking and willing, but they do invite us to reorder or restructure them according to their God-given capacities. In biblical language this is the painful journey of metanoia, or conversion. The human journey of the heart is the movement from selfish love to selfless and unconditional love, but the initiative comes from God. God is always the first to reach out and approach the human person and [God] is the last to go away….
The journey of our hearts through the different types of desert experiences in our lives restores the image and likeness [of God] provided we engage in what is involved. Are you ready to face the unmasking and dismantling of false notions of love and life that may be lurking in your heart? If you are, then take time to meditate on the Beatitudes….
The beauty portrayed in the Beatitudes is a yardstick for you to measure the areas of brokenness that are still operative within your heart. Perhaps you may wish to reflect on each one separately in order to see how the Beatitudes address your false symbols of security, power and self-esteem that the false self struggles to satisfy.
Our starting point is the heart. Blessed are the pure in heart: they shall see God. What an astonishing promise! The purity Jesus speaks of in this Beatitude presupposes a heart where affections, intellect and will are integrated in a love that is a participation in the life of God himself.
Reference:
Patricia Jordan, An Affair of the Heart: A Biblical and Franciscan Journey (Gracewing, 2008), 52–53.
Image Credit and inspiration: Minh Trí, untitled (detail), 2022, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like a raindrop poised on a leaf, the Beatitudes provide a drop-by-drop prescription to counter-culturally create the kin-dom of God.
Story from Our Community:
The stories from the community always uplift my spirit. Today, I became tearful while reading Lazarus’s story. It touched me deeply, and I felt connected even through the ethernet. I am grateful and thankful for all the stories my brothers and sisters across the world send to Center for Action and Contemplation. They help me feel part of the bigger story!
— Shona C.
