Coffee Talk Redux is a reflection on things God is teaching me. In some cases the ideas for these topics may arise from some conversation I may have had with someone, or a thought that crossed my mind, something I have written, or perhaps something I read somewhere, or maybe a combination of all of these. In any case think of this as a discussion on what God is teaching us to help us grow in our understanding of His will for us.
The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12) comprise the first part of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount and express in the words of the Lord what it means to be a follower of Christ. The Fathers of the Church attached great importance to the Sermon on the Mount and St. Augustine in particular saw the Beatitudes as a summary of what it means to live as a Christian. Augustine saw in the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount Christ’s answer to man’s basic questions about happiness and the path that man must take to God.However, the Sermon on the Mount throughout the ages has been controversial and is generally seen as so demanding that its teachings are often considered to hold out for an impossible ideal. The result has been a drift in moral thinking to the point where Christian morality is no longer focused on the teachings of Christ as given in His Sermon on the Mount nor is it focused on the finality of the happiness to be found in the beatific vision. Instead, this drift of moral thought has lead to a morality founded on the exterior idea of obligation wherein moral choices are based on one’s adherence to laws, commandments, and prohibitions. At the same time spirituality is separated from morality and viewed as simply an ascetical or mystical practice. However, the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount speaks to the heart and soul and defines an interior sense of morality based on an inner spiritual conversion where one abandons their ordinary human life and commits to following and imitating the life of Christ.
Augustine recognized this point in his interpretation of the Beatitudes wherein he saw in them seven stages of spiritual formation that lead the Christian from humility or poverty in spirit to wisdom and the vision of God. The Beatitudes therefore serve as a guide for the spiritual growth of a Christian with conversion itself represented by the first three Beatitudes and the search for the vision of God found in the fourth through the seventh. This rebirth in Christ is the essence of a conversion and a resulting spirituality that has a morality of action guided not by external laws, obligations, and commandments but living one’s life according to the ideal of the Beatitudes. When one makes this connection of the Beatitudes as the basis for one’s spirituality and moral behavior only then can one’s life be said to be ordered in an interior sense to the Greatest Commandment, that is as Christ says in Matthew 22:37-39, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind … You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The highest good wherein man can find his ultimate happiness is only found in God and the Gospel message of His Son Jesus Christ. The Beatitudes are the expression of this happiness promised by Christ to those who accept His teachings and follow Him in a life of faith. This definition of the Beatitudes expresses two important points, that is one must accept His teachings and one must follow Him. Because of man’s freedom he can choose either to accept the teachings of Christ or accept the way of the world and find happiness instead in created goods. That is by turning away from God as his source of happiness and focusing on worldly pleasures, power, and possessions and worshiping these in a prideful way that ultimately leads man to a life of evil, sin, and suffering. This decision to accept Christ’s teachings is the essence of moral theology, which is seeking our happiness in God and explains what we are to do with our free will. The Beatitudes are therefore the framework of Christ’s teachings on morality.
The Beatitudes also challenge man to follow and imitate Christ. By uniting ourselves with Christ we are justified by His grace through faith and our sins and the evil we have caused are forgiven and forgotten. We are reconciled through faith to communion with God thus fulfilling the promise of our baptism by receiving the gift of eternal life. Christ’s sacrifice and the sufferings He bore for us on the Cross serve as an example for man and challenge us to follow in His footsteps and give our lives to Him. This is the basis of spirituality, which requires a true conversion of our hearts and our minds to Christ who as Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 2:5 is the one mediator between God and men who by His sacrifice became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him (Hebrews 5:9). Through His Passion Christ has united Himself to all of mankind and it is through the mystery of our communion with Him that man finds his ultimate and true happiness in God.
Our true happiness is therefore found in what some have called a loving vision of God. Paul tells us of this in 1 Corinthian 13:12 when he says, for now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully. This vision of God as our source of happiness is also expressed by Christ in His Sermon on the Mount in the sixth beatitude in Matthew 5:8 where He says, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. The essence of our happiness is therefore this biblical call of man to clean the window to his soul letting the light of God shine in so that one can make the right choices and seek the highest good, which is God. This is what leads and draws man to the Kingdom of God and eternal life. This loving vision of God will take us to our final end, that supreme goal toward which our whole life and all our actions tend. This loving vision of God wherein man’s ultimate happiness is found is the essence of a moral theology and a spirituality that is grounded in the Beatitudes. God’s gift of faith and the Beatitudes given us in the words of Christ work together to show man how to live his life in conformity with God’s eternal plan so that his final end may be the true happiness that is only found in God.
Augustine also recognized that we cannot achieve our final end in the true happiness of God without His help. Man cannot do this by himself, so man needs God and His gift of grace. Augustine recognized the important role that is played by grace, the virtues, and especially the gifts of the Holy Spirit as given in Isaiah 11. Augustine saw an intimate one to one connection between the Beatitudes and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In the view of Augustine it is through the love of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s gifts that one is led spiritually to the wisdom and happiness that is only found in God. This means that one must conform their inner spirituality, that is their heart and soul, to a life that follows the Beatitudes under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. By following the way of the Holy Spirit and the Beatitudes the Christian will find that there is no distinction between morality and spirituality, to be spiritual is to be moral and these are in fact inseparable.
Augustine would therefore argue that the Beatitudes are not an unattainable ideal that man cannot accomplish. Rather, with God’s grace and His charity acting through the Holy Spirit along with the gifts of the Spirit man can achieve what Christ intended in the Beatitudes. When viewed in this way there is no longer a distinction or a separation between morality and spirituality. It is found instead that the Beatitudes serve as the intimate link between Christian morality and spirituality reconciling at the same time man’s need for morality and the spiritual desire for happiness that is only found in God.
By finding our happiness in this loving vision of God we begin to experience the Kingdom of God right now and we are embraced by the true love that flows between the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the same unconditional love that the Father shows to us who are His adopted Sons. For Paul tells us of this spiritual conversion in Romans 8:15-18 that we have received the spirit of sonship… that we are children of God… and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him… that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
When we understand that God is the source of our happiness then with the gift of His unconditional love the Beatitudes begin to make sense and can become our faith in action. We will know how to love our families and our neighbors, we can go out into the world to serve our communities and those that are in need, and show all of them this same unconditional love that we see and have from the Father. They will see the words of Christ expressed by the Beatitudes reflected clearly in the mirror of our hearts along with the joy on our faces, for we will then have the virtue of charity or a love that far surpasses that of just our faith or our hope.
With this unconditional love we receive from the Father our faith is then one of action, anything is possible, and we can reach out to our fellow man who may be poor in spirit, we can comfort those who mourn, lift up those who are suffering, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, be merciful to others, and work for peace, justice, and the common good. By seeking our happiness in the loving vision of God we are able to find our true happiness and answer the call of Christ in the Beatitudes. (Ronald L. Fournier © 2009)
