Beatitudes

Second beatitude

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted

When it is lamented by those who repent, crying is a conscious and painful act; every sinner should cry. It is true that we usually mourn those who died, but in fact the iniquitous is no longer a living creature, but dead. He is crying himself, then, and will come back to life; weep prompted by sincere repentance and be consoled with loving forgiveness. In this Beatitude Jesus exhorts us to free ourselves from the sin with solicitude, which is always lurking with its seductions; so, having become light and agile on the road to the summit, we can approach ever more rapidly, driven by the breath of the purified soul, in the perfect light of the truth.

Blessed is the weeping which is a consequence of the admission of sins, that weeping which is effect and does not cause errors and lusts in which one has fallen. The pain of the soul can not be considered a stranger to the very essence of Bliss, since the soul deplores the life spent in vice.

The absence of pain is a sign that the breath of life received by the Creator is extinguished, dead and buried under the weight of sins; some, after having surrendered themselves to a dissolute life without sore, become insensitive and inert towards the virtuous life, they do not realize at all what they have done and continue to do. Paul also punishes the word who has violated his father's wedding bed, until he becomes aware of his sin: "This is in fact the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from impurity, that each of you knows how to treat his own body with holiness and respect, without allowing himself to be dominated by passion, like the pagans who do not know God; that no one in this field offends or deceives his brother, because the Lord punishes all these things, as we have already said and reiterated. God has not called us to impurity, but to sanctification "(1 Thess 4: 7-7). Crying is a grim disposition of the soul, it is the painful reaction to the loss of what pleases, for the deprivation of what is desired. This provision does not find room for those who spend a happy life.

Who has been able to contemplate the true good and has then become aware of the poverty of human nature, will retain his soul completely unfortunate, because today the life of men is conducted on roads that turn away from that good. Jesus considers blessed not the pain, but the knowledge of the good. The good that we have been deprived of transcends our faculties; consequently, it becomes fundamental to look for what is ever the good from which the dark cavern of human nature, in this daily life, can not be illuminated. Does not our desire turn our gaze to what is indeterminable and incomprehensible? The more we believe that goodness is, by its nature, superior to our knowledge, the more crying and despair grows in us, because the good from which we are separated by nature is so immensely elevated in nature that we can not even contain his knowledge.

Each of the passions that stir in us, if it has taken the upper hand, becomes the owner of those who have made a slave. Once the soul has become possessed, the passion abuses those who are subjected to it, making use of its reasoning for what it pleases; so the anger, the fear, the indolence, the audacity, the passion of the pain and the pleasure, the hate, the revenge, the lack of pity, the roughness, the envy, the adulation, and all passions enslave the soul to its own power. It seems a condemnation without hope, but it is not so: the soul turns its gaze to the true Good and will re-emerge from the deception of the present life.

Men who have no knowledge of the goods of which our nature has been deprived spend their present life in pleasure; and to live in such total debauchery leads not to search for the best realities. Jesus therefore calls the tears to be blessed, not because he considers them a moment of bliss in itself, but because of the effect that this has on the soul.

The Lord says: "Blessed are those who weep", and the discourse does not end here, but adds "Because they will be comforted". The one who pronounced this truth was Moses in the mystical observances of Easter; he prescribed to his people on holidays unleavened bread, that is, a bread without salt, without yeast and without oil, cooked quickly on hot plates, to be ready to follow the Lord: "Here is how you will eat it: with your hips encircled , sandals on your feet, a stick in your hand; you will eat it quickly "(Ex 12: 8-11); for the meal, then, as a companion, he established, bitter herbs, so that the people could learn, through similar symbolism, that one can not take part in that mystical party in another way if not accompanying the bitterness of everyday life with the simplicity of true Life. Even David, while seeing the culmination of human fortune to which he had arrived, added the "bitter herbs" to his life, languishing in moaning and weeping for the prolongation of his stay in the flesh.

Likewise, Jesus does not lose the opportunity to warn his disciples about the future effects and consequences of an earthly life lived only amidst enjoyments and riches: "There was a rich man, who was dressed in purple and fine linen and every day he banquely feasted. A beggar, named Lazarus, lay at his door, covered with sores, eager to feed himself with what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came to lick their sores. One day the poor man died and was taken by the angels into Abraham's womb. The rich man also died and was buried. Standing in the hell among the torments, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham and Lazarus from afar beside him. Then shouting he said: Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger into the water and wet my tongue, because this flame tortures me. But Abraham answered: Son, remember that you have received your possessions during your life and Lazarus likewise its evils; but now he is consoled and you are in the midst of torments".
(Lk 16: 19-25)

And this is right, since the absence of will or, rather, the bad commitment takes us away from the good design that God has established for us his favorite creatures of all Creation. In fact, God had prescribed that our enjoyment of the good was free from evil and had forbidden that the experience of what is evil was mixed with good (Gn 2: 16-17); but for our voracious and foolish pride, we voluntarily filled ourselves with the opposite. This is why human nature must experience both, participate in crying and exult in joy. Since there are two dimensions of existence, and our life is measured according to the behavior of both, there are also two kinds of joy: an ephemeral in this very existence, the other eternal linked to the perspective and hope of the future Life.

It is not difficult, now, to understand the meaning of those words: "Blessed are those who weep"; in fact, they will be consoled for the infinite centuries; consolation takes place through the participation of the Comforter. The gift of consolation is an action proper to the Spirit of which we can be made worthy too, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus says: "Blessed are the afflicted". Affliction is not the exclusive condition of people who have needs, because they are poor, because they are hungry. For the Lord, the afflicted are those who experience the difficulty of living according to the Laws of God precisely on this earth, among men and all their erroneous strategies of conquest of power and pleasure.

Jesus himself feels affliction on the Cross when he exclaims "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mk 15:33), but does not say: "God has left me". With this exclamation it seems to emphasize how difficult that moment was, because the last phases of His human history were obscuring the face of the Father, they were trying to tear it away from the harmony of intent with "my Father in Heaven". The obstacle to the attainment of Bliss is precisely this: to see that this world does everything to tear us away from the certainty of God. Grief is the effort of the believer in the daily struggle against this difficult battle. Beatitude is reached by defeating affliction, despite the effort to try to remain faithful in serving the Lord.

Jesus therefore tells us that if we wish to continue to follow him, if we wish to hear His voice and live His word, we must all experience this affliction, while being aware that from the people around us we will never receive help to remain faithful to His word. When Jesus, surrounded by the crowd, says: "Come to me you all who are fatigued and oppressed, I will restore you" (Mt 11:28), wants to understand that affliction should not discourage us, because He has come precisely to support us in this battle: "you will have tribulation in the world, but have confidence; I have conquered the world "(Jn 16:33). Here is the victory over affliction! There is no need to fall into the goodness with which these Beatitudes are usually interpreted: affliction is related to faith and is not linked to human, earthly, economic, social conditions. As such it is necessary to love and desire it, because its victory is another step on the path of the "Mountain" that leads us to conquer the summit of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Only those who mourn or who have cried know how to love and understand, because they have understood that the pain subsides if the cry is on the heart of God, because they have understood that crying does not break faith, does not dry up prayer, but changes nature and , from pain, becomes blessed consolation.