Sunday November 1st - The Feast of All Saints -
A Reflection By Fr. Leo
The Beatitudes sound like a list of paradoxes until we understand what they mean. The list describes one who lives in God; the living saints if you will, that we are becoming. Let’s look at them one by one.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” For the poor in spirit, the kingdom isn’t coming, it is now. Poor in ego-driven living, they are aware of God’s presence in all things and unite themselves in love with God. They grow rich, they are in heaven. In the “Glass Bead Game,” by Herman Hesse, the Music Master is a spiritual man who is so united with God, that as he approached death and his body was fading, he found less need for words and lived with a humble look of serenity on his face. He was in heaven before his body died. Something his disciple didn’t realize till later. For the “poor” in spirit, this is their reality. Living in the presence of God through a simple way of life may seem poor to the uninitiated, but to the seeker it is rich and heaven itself.
“Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Mourning isn’t easy. It is being vulnerable to the reality of what we cannot control. Loss is a part of life that we can’t deny or ignore. Honestly, embracing our losses opens the door for surrender to God and the “more” that waits beyond our perception of loss. In faith our losses bring us gain; gain of our truer self over our false selves, gain of eternal life over death, when in the communion of saints we find that those we thought gone are still with us. So, blessed are those who mourn, they will find comfort.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.” The meek are those who have no power or control over people, places or things. They don’t need it. Even in prison they know that inherent worth comes from God, he created them in love and dwells within them. The truly meek need nothing else but that inner experience of God. When we give up trying to control, we are no longer controlled by what we are trying to control. We are no longer liberals, or conservatives, we are free of what is false and live the truth in love. They are the same.
When the above three beatitudes become real in our inner-selves, the rest will follow. We will hunger for the good. We will be merciful because of our own unearned blessedness. Our hearts will know more of love, and we will bring peace into the world through our own inner peace radiating through our beings. Our presence, words and actions will all convey the peace within us. We won’t worry about those who don’t get it and hate us for it, because we will know we are blessed. We will know heaven now and not be anxious about death’s gifts of eternal glory. All things will become gift for us and we will live in the fullness of grace in unison with the God of all.