A saint is someone who loves God and neighbor. A saint is someone who has taken the Beatitudes to heart. The Beatitudes give life. In a deep sense, the Beatitudes are life at its most real.
One of my favorite aspects of All Saints Day is the recognition that not all saints are known. Not every person, perhaps not even most, who has attained beatitude with God is formally canonized by the Church.
In his Apostolic Exhortation “On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World,” Pope Francis reminded us that holiness is not as rare as we tend to think it is.1 I think our tendency to make holiness something rare and other-worldly is a defense mechanism. It’s one we employ to keep the requirements of holiness “out there,” away from me. That way, God makes no unreasonable demands on me.
There is only one vocation, which all of us received when we were baptized: to follow Christ. Following Christ means walking the path of holiness. It means hungering and thirsting for righteousness. It means practicing the Beatitudes.
Formally, beatitude is defined as “a state of utmost bliss.” To attain beatitude is to be supremely happy. Do the beatitudes we just heard sound like a state of bliss? The relationship of the Beatitudes to happiness, at least as we have been conditioned to understand happiness, is a paradoxical. In a paradox two seemingly opposed things are brought together. Hence, paradoxes can appear to be contradictions. To pick just one example from the Beatitudes we just heard: mourning doesn’t sound much like happiness to me.
Thinking about mourning reminds us that tomorrow is All Souls Day. It is a day that kicks off a month during which the Church bids us to remember and to pray for our beloved dead. Remembering grandparents, parents, spouses, children, siblings, and friends who have died is bitter sweet. It’s painful because we miss them but joyful because we think about how much they enriched our lives. This also points to something mentioned in our second reading: hope. We hope to see them again in a time and space where death can never again separate us.
Our deepest desire, our hope, is to be happy. In the Beatitudes, Jesus gives us the way of happiness. But Jesus's way seems to be the exact opposite of what we learn culturally and societally, which is that happiness consists largely in doing what I want and having what I want. But as many social indicators show us, this is emirically untrue. In fact, a self-first approach may be the shortest path to misery.
Understanding the Beatitudes as the way of happiness is what it means to have genuine hope. As Christians, our hope is for a world in which everyone practices the Beatitudes. This world, which, in many ways, is the opposite of our own, is called the Kingdom of God. We don’t just stand around waiting for the Kingdom of God to appear. God’s kingdom made its appearance when Jesus came. God’s Kingdom is present whenever and wherever the Beatitudes are practiced.
This brings us to some Biblical math. Typically, the number 8 in the Bible signifies both a new beginning and ultimate fulfillment. There are 8 Beatitudes by which Jesus gives us the path to ultimate fulfillment.
In our reading from Revelation there are 144,000 before Christ’s throne.2 One hundred forty-four is 12 x 12. 144,000 is 144 x 1,000. There are twelve tribes of Israel and twelve apostles. Christ sent the apostles to spread the Gospel throughout the world. So, 144,000 means a lot of people. These people, it is made clear, are “from every nation, race, people, and tongue.”3
The white-robed multitude are those “who have survived the time of great distress.”4 When is the time of “great distress”? It’s now! Your lifetime is the time of great distress. Think about all the signs Jesus gave for the end of the world: pestilence, natural disasters, wars, famines, etc.. Well, when in human history haven’t we experienced these phenomena? Simple answer: never! For Christians it’s always the end of the world until the end of the world. This is why we live not only with purpose but with a certain sense of urgency.
Practicing the Beatitudes is how we live both with purpose and urgency. It isn’t easy to practice the Beatitudes. It’s not easy to meek and merciful. It isn’t easy to be a peacemaker. It’s not easy to practice the Spiritual Work of Mercy of bearing wrongs patiently. We’re practicing Christians because we haven’t yet learned how to love perfectly.
Christian community, not just “the Church,” writ large, but our parish, isn’t just important but necessary to attaining holiness. As Pope Francis observed in his Apostolic Exhortation on holiness:
We are never completely ourselves unless we belong to a people. That is why no one is saved alone, as an isolated individual. Rather, God draws us to himself, taking into account the complex fabric of interpersonal relationships present in a human community. God wanted to enter into the life and history of a people5The Beatitudes, not the Ten Commandments, are the charter for Christian life, the charter of the Church. Besides, anyone who lives the Beatitudes obeys the Ten Commandments and does so for the right reason. The right reason is always love of God and of our neighbor. Practicing the Beatitudes is what makes you a Christian.
We’ve all heard that going to Church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car. But a car that never goes to the garage for service eventually doesn’t run well and breaks down. I think the same is true for Christians. We need the grace we receive in and through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and the sacrament of penance. Going to Church also makes you part of a community, a member of God's Pilgrim People. We walk the pilgrim path with those who are also seeking to follow Christ. The people in our parish are our companions on the Way. A companion, in a literal sense, is someone with whom you share bread.
Mass, as the word indicates, ends with the dismissal. So, when you’re sent out with “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life,” your response, beyond saying “Thanks be to God,” is supposed to be living the beatitudes.
1 Apostolic Exhortation, On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World [Gaudete et Exsultate], sec. 6-9.↩
2 Revelation 7:4.↩
3 Revelation 7:9.↩
4 Revelation 7:14.↩
5 Apostolic Exhortation, On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World [Gaudete et Exsultate], sec. 6.↩
No comments:
Post a Comment