The Beatitudes are not a checklist for the holy, but a call to imitate the wounded Christ and allow him to reform our hearts so that they conform to his broken heart. This is the grace of Beatitude - a way to imitate Christ Jesus, who is all mercy, all peace, all mourning turned to joy, a way to imitate him in whom we are becoming Beatitude. We are invited to take on the mind of Christ in our embrace of our own poverty and neediness and inadequacy. The saints are here to remind us, “Don’t be afraid. It’s not about you. It’s about him; let him transform you.”
Jesus invites us to step into the poverty and helplessness we need no longer fear and flee or deny - because we will find him and our brothers and sisters down there. What Jesus enumerates are attitudes and ways of being that come from relationship - with him and with one another - attitudes arrived at by the hard road of humility, vulnerability and doing the opposite of what my first snarky reaction might be. For when I finally recognize how poor and mercy-hungry I am, maybe, just maybe I begin to notice that I am not alone, that others are needy like me - they need mercy and peace like me. Then hopefully, my heart gets broken open.
In the kingdom proclaimed by Jesus this morning, a revolution is happening, with vulnerability at the center. Inadequacy, vulnerability are the key to Beatitude, the source of all that gives us life and joy, love, belonging and connectedness. For when I am vulnerable, I realize that I desperately need God; I realize that I desperately need others. I come to understand that I am imperfect, inadequate and on the way along with my brothers and sisters, and so I am connected.* It is this loving connectivity that is true Beatitude. To be poor, merciful, to mourn over all the tragedy that surrounds us, to allow ourselves to be rejected for doing the right thing - this was Jesus’ way. It is to be our way, as it was for all the saints. But bear in mind, when you love like this you bleed like Jesus did and your robes get stained but absolutely radiant.
Our way is imitation of Christ, not dumb impersonation, but likeness that will lead to transformation. I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I that live, but the wounded Christ living in me; the life I now live in the flesh, I live in faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. This is what the saints wanted with all their hearts, what Jesus longs for - for each of us - this deep inter-subjectivity and connectivity. And so, because he loves the humble beauty of our inadequacy, our need of him, he comes to abide with us in Holy Communion. Let us open to him.
*See Jamie Arpin-Ricci on Brené Brown in Huffington Post blog for April 8, 2015.
