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There was a well-known German philosopher, Max Scheler, who said that Zacchaeus came to see and love in himself what Jesus saw and loved in him. And that Peter, gradually and progressively, came to see and love in himself what Jesus saw and loved in him. It’s not a bad way of summarizing a lot of gospel spirituality. In the Beatitudes that we just heard, all that blessedness stuff, Jesus is telling us what he sees in us, and his hope is that we’ll see it in ourselves. The Beatitudes have often been referred to as “ways of being”; I prefer to consider the Beatitudes as “ways of seeing.” The Beatitudes start off with Jesus telling us what he sees when he looks at us. 

By the way, there are three basic ways of seeing or knowing. The eye of the flesh knows by observation. Put your glasses on or look into a microscope or telescope, and you’ll see more. The eye of the mind knows by abstraction. When I say, “What’s four plus four?” your mind automatically abstracts it into something called eight. You don’t have to line up eight objects and start counting them. But besides the way the eye and the way of the mind, observation and abstraction, the heart also knows; it knows through union. The heart unites with what it knows and therefore it knows it from the inside out. Union is the way we know in the spiritual life. You want to know another person? Spend some time with them. Or as the Cherokee say, “Don’t judge a person until you walk a mile in their moccasins.” That’s a statement about knowing through uniting with another. 

The Beatitudes start off with Jesus ascending the mountain. Why? Is he trying to escape from people? No. Traditionally, the higher you ascended the closer you were to God. So, Jesus is ascending the mountain to unite with God. The heart knows by union. On this first day of Jesus’ ministry, we are going to get a privileged look into the heart of Jesus. Jesus is uniting with God to tell us what God see in us, and we know God always tells the truth. Will we be able to handle the truth? Will we be able to see and love in ourselves what God sees and loves in us? Let’s find out. 

There are eight Beatitudes, with the eight one sort of spinning out into a ninth one. The first four: blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, and blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness form a grouping. Each of these first four describe a negative state we have all found ourselves in. Trust me, there is nothing good about been poor in spirit, or mourning, or being too meek, or about hungering or thirsting. I have experienced every one of those, and there’s nothing good about any of them. For Jesus, these negative states are all real; they’re not illusions. There just not ultimate. 

While poverty, mourning, excessive meekness, and hungering and thirsting are all real, there is something more real, more enduring that Jesus sees in us and wants us to identify with. He sees a deeper blessedness in each of us. This blessedness is what Jesus thinks is our deepest identity. In other words, Jesus sees that we have transcendence power. We are just a little bit more—in fact, a whole lot more—than any negative state that afflicts us. You are more than your poverty of spirit, you more than your mourning, you are more than your meekness, you are more than your hungers and your thirsts, you are more than your cancer diagnosis, you are more than your chronic pain, you are more than your depression, you are more than your broken relationships, etc. When we identify with our deepest self—the self Jesus always sees—there is always a little bit of transcendence, “more-ness.” So, while your mourning is real, the deeper blessedness, which is not only in you but is you, will eventually stir and push into your mourning and bring you comfort. That’s how the first four beatitudes work. They tell you that you are more than anything that can afflict you. Among all sorts of other things, you are a child of God. You participate in divine being, and so you have transcendence power. The task of the spiritual life is to see and love in ourselves what Jesus sees and loves in us. Have you ever seen and loved the blessedness, the transcendence power, that is within you?

The next four beatitudes work a little differently. The next four beatitudes: blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those persecuted for righteousness’ sake do not tell us that we have transcendence power but manifestation power. These four are about how this deeper blessedness, that is you, wants to show itself, wants give itself, wants to manifest itself in the world. 

Let’s look at one of these: blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Peacemaking is really about restoring relationships. Every one of us in this room, at this very moment, secretly wish that our relationship with God, with neighbour, with self, or with the earth, could be better, could flow a little easier. This is one of the ways the deeper blessedness within you wants to manifest itself—by restoring relationships. When you are in the process of restoring relationships, in that very moment you know you are being generated by some deeper reality. It is like you are being born anew as a child of God. You are never more a child a child of God than when you are bringing peace to a situation or a relationship. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 

This power to unify, this power to make two into one, will make you a little crazy. As a peacemaker, you will not be able to tolerate anything that is lost or divided. When things are not united, there is a shepherd who does something foolish. The shepherd leaves the 99 sheep and goes after the one lost one until it is reunited with the rest. There is a woman who does something foolish. She turns her house upside down until she finds the lost coin and unites with the other coins. There is a father who does something foolish. He seeks out and forgives a wayward son until they are united. The divine cannot tolerate anything getting lost. When you allow the blessedness that is within you to manifest itself as an effort to bring peace, you also will not be able to tolerate division. That’s why Jesus even goes down to hell in the Apostles’ Creed; he can’t stand that somebody doesn’t know. And how do you know in the spiritual life? By observation? By abstraction? No. By union. Jesus unites, even in hell, with the object of his love. We are always willing to leave someone out there. This reality is nothing like that. 

There’s so much in these Beatitudes. The first four tell us we have transcendence power. The next four tell us we have manifestation power. When you are in touch with this, soon you find out that what’s going on inside of you is going on everywhere. And therefore, what? You’re in union. And then you find out that loss, of any kind, is unacceptable. This is foolishness to the world, as St. Paul told us in that second reading, but it’s the wisdom of God living its life within you. 

See and love in yourself what God has always seen and loved in you from the very beginning. 

Fr. Phil Mulligan