Beatitudes and The Many Ways to be Saved in Christ

St. Isaac the Syrian:
"But lo, the majority of men do not attain to such innocency [purity of heart], yet we hope that for their good deeds a portion is reserved for them in the Kingdom of the Heavens.  This can be ascertained from the understanding of the Beatitudes of the Gospel, which He stated differently in order to make known to us the many variations in the diverse modes of life within these same Beatitudes.  For in all the measures of every way upon which each man journeys to Him, God opens before him the gate of the Kingdom of the Heavens."


One way to view the Beatitudes is as a ladder, a progression of spiritual growth.  However, St. Isaac points out that the Beatitudes may also be viewed as a list of ways, or examples of ways, the Holy Spirit works in Christ's many-membered body to save the whole.  "The majority" of us will strive our whole life, yet the circumstances of our life will preclude the attainment of great purity of mind and heart.  But St. Isaac says that from understanding the Beatitudes we know that within the blessing of the Kingdom of Heaven there are many modes.  Some may mourn while others hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Some may have a meek "mode of life," while others excel in peacemaking.  Of course these all together describe Christ, whose body we are.  


We need not despair when we see how spiritually poor we are, for the first Beatitude is for us:  Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Falling Off the Ladder

Beginning with Jacob in the Old Testament, the ladder has been used as a picture of human transformation. This metaphor is helpful, as we have seen applying it to the Beatitudes. It is helpful in that it enables us to focus on one spiritual struggle at a time instead of continually feeling overwhelmed with the enormity of the task: total transformation into the image of Christ. When we become overwhelmed, we give up. We feel as though there were nothing that we can do to cooperate with our own salvation. Looking at our spiritual journey as a series of steps, we find a specific place to begin when we are confronted with the commands of Christ and the seeming impossibility of fully living them out in our lives. Furthermore, the ladder metaphor helps us recognize movements and changes in our spiritual lives. We are not surprised by seasons of Grace, of shifts in the focus of our spiritual labor. However, viewing spiritual life as an ascent up a ladder does have a downside.

When we view our spiritual life as a ladder, it is possible to become too self conscious of our spiritual life, as though we could actually gage “where” we are on the ladder of spiritual ascent. While there may be many sins and distractions that may keep us from climbing the ladder of the Beatitudes, the one sin that will most certainly cause us to fall from the ladder is pride. Pride is a subtle sin. Theft, fornication or murder, for example, are manifest outside of us and are consequently much more easily recognizable—although many a man and woman has so justified their actions to themselves that even externally manifest sins are not recognized. But pride is a thousand times more difficult to recognize, for pride is nothing more than a perspective, a way of viewing oneself and the universe. In fact, you might even say that pride is viewing oneself. It is the ultimate delusion. When we imagine that we can look at ourselves “objectively,” we are most deceived.

We are creatures. We are finite. We do not have the ability to escape ourselves to stand outside ourselves and evaluate ourselves. Yes, we can see some things. I can see what I have done, but I never know all of the reasons—conscious and subconscious—why I do the things I do. I can see, for example, that I became angry when someone suddenly cut into my lane on the freeway without signaling. But why it makes me angry, why I think it is okay to get angry, and what the mental-emotional processes are by which this takes place, all of this is subconscious. And not only do I know very little about why I do what I do, I generally see very little of what I do; or I see only of myself what I want to see. One of the reasons why we need community is that it is only in the reactions and responses of others that we are able to see some of the uglier bits of ourselves, bits that we would rather imagine do not exist. And, to extend this matter a little further, if I know only some of the reasons why I do what I do, I know even less (generally much, much less) why others do what they do. When I begin to think I know why others do what they do or when I begin to think that I can judge myself (for example, where I am in my spiritual journey), then I can be pretty certain that I have fallen off the ladder completely. (Warning: There may be times when I can be pretty sure that I have fallen off the ladder, but I can never judge the spiritual state of another.)

God has created us to keep our focus on Him, not ourselves. To use the words of the book of Hebrews, when we “look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,” we are able to run the course of our life with endurance. We grow by looking at Christ, not ourselves. Children are wonderful examples of freedom from self-consciousness. Children do not notice themselves growing up. In this way we too must become like children if we are going to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

You might be thinking right about now that falling off the ladder of the Beatitudes is very common. If pride knocks us off the ladder, perhaps you are even wondering if you have ever really climbed the ladder at all. Good. The first rung on the ladder is humility, poverty of spirit. To admit that you have fallen off the ladder, or that perhaps you have never really climbed the ladder at all, is to begin climbing the ladder again. Remember, we never leave the first step even as we climb to higher steps. “A broken and contrite heart” is the foundation of all righteousness, all mercy, all purity of heart. In a sense, the daily death, the daily taking up of our cross and following Christ is the daily (sometimes moment by moment) acknowledgment of our failure. The Christian life is a life of falling down and getting back up again, day by day and moment by moment.

Correction

Some of you may have noticed that in my last post I attached the reward of step eight to step seven: one of the dangers of writing about a text without having it open before you. Step seven, being peacemakers, reveals the children of God. On the ladder of the beatitudes, poverty and mourning draw the grace of the Holy Spirit who produces meekness and hunger and thirst for righteousness. Righteousness, because it is nothing else but the love for God, leads to mercy, the willing sharing in the pain of others, because the love for God leads to the love for neighbour. Mercy purifies the heart so that we can see God there. Seeing God makes us like God: we are transformed into peacemakers bringing the light and peace of God where ever we go and thus we are called children of God. This is the fullness, the seventh step.

The eighth step is persecution for righteousness sake. St. John Chrysostom says that Jesus added this verse so that we would not think that one should seek peace (lack of conflict) at all costs. Chrysostom goes on to clarify that when we help others we are being righteous.

The eighth step has the most explanation: it goes on for three verses. Persecution is expanded to include reviling and evil speaking. “Rejoice and be exceedingly glad” Jesus exhorts us, “for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” This eighth step is the eschatological step, the new day, the day transcending all days, the day that colors all days. Persecution, misunderstanding, slander: these are the ways we bear with Christ the burdens of our neighbour. We share in the sufferings of Christ; we truly are His body.

We are surprised when those we love do not see what we see, when what brings us so much joy and peace is perceived only as a threat. How could it be any other way? Christ came to His own and His own did not receive him: as with the head, so with the body. It is in bearing the death of rejection that we with Christ conquer death. It is in passing through suffering that we shine with the Light of the Transfiguration so that in the end even our persecutors (perhaps especially our persecutors) see the light—whether in this life or the next.

Blessed are the Peacemakers

Please notice that it does not say, “Blessed are the good negotiators.” Peacemaking is not about negotiating resolution between hostile parties. Peacemaking is about being peace. Now, the ability to negotiate the end of a dispute is a great gift and I do not disparage it, but this is not what this beatitude is talking about. One need not be a Christian at all to be a good negotiator, one who can bring about the cessation of hostilities, and certainly this can be called peace. We might even call it the peace of this world. But Jesus offers us a different kind of peace: “My peace I give to you, not as the world gives” (John 14:27).

The peace that Jesus gives is himself, “He is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14). The peace of Christ passes understanding; it is a reconciliation of our very being with God and neighbor and even with the various forces that we find at work within ourselves. The peace of God is a peace of heart that does not necessarily translate into a cessation of external hostility, as the next verse will tell us. The peace of God is the fruit of righteousness: right relationship with God and neighbor. It is the rest we enter when we cease from our own labor. A person filled with such peace makes peace wherever he or she goes.

Jesus tells his disciples that when they enter a house, their peace will come upon it, if the house is worthy to receive it. Peacemakers bring peace with them. St. James says that peacemakers sow the fruit of righteousness in peace. Their hearts are free from envy, self seeking, partiality or hypocrisy so they are full of a wisdom that is pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, and full of mercy and good fruits: what St. James calls the “wisdom from above” (James 3:13-18). Such a peacemaker is a man or woman with a pure heart, who has seen God and from whom the life of God radiates.

But peacemaking has a cost. Jesus made peace through his flesh, suffering the unjust attacks of those whom he loved. St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians says that Jesus made peace by breaking down the wall that separates men, “to create in himself one new man” (Eph. 2:15). However, not everyone wants peace. Those who fear put their trust in walls, and those who tear them down become a threat to them. The peaceful man or woman will tear down walls, not necessarily by any external action, but by merely being themselves, full of the life, light and love of God. Consequently, they will be persecuted by those who put their trust in walls.

Blessed Are the Pure In Heart

Although I have with God’s help at times ascended to the high plains of mercy, I cannot say that I have ever walked the plateaus of purity of heart nor the peaks of peacemaking. I have gazed upon them. And in this I derive hope. The promise of the sixth beatitude it nothing less than deification, the beatific vision, to see God. To see God is to become like God, as St. John says, “When He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” The hope for such a vision leads us to purify ourselves, which is its prerequisite, a vision bearing the fruit of transformation: “we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.”

A pure heart is a heart with undivided loyalties, a heart that has but one Master. Most of the time our hearts are scattered with longings and loyalties, and fears and resentments pushing and pulling us one way and then another. Generally we don’t even know what’s underneath it all, what the roots of our fear or anger or lust are. Sometimes, a good counselor can help us identify some of the underlying causes of our fears or inordinate lusts. But knowing, for example, that abuse I experienced as a child contributes to this or that tendency in my life, does not go very far in helping me purify my heart of its lust-driven and anger-driven and fear-driven tendencies (what in Orthodox spirituality is called “the passions”). I cannot go back and undo the past. I cannot change what I or someone else has done. I can, however, forgive and repent. I can do this in the present, regardless of the past.

Anyone who has sincerely tried to forgive someone who has deeply hurt them knows that it is not possible without God’s help and a lot of time. When it comes to forgiving, we are truly poor in spirit. We must return to the beginning, the foundation that we have actually never left; we must see and accept our poverty. I try to forgive, yet my wounded heart won’t let me; so I return to God offering Him my poverty. Brokenness and tears is an offering that God accepts. The Holy Spirit comes to us as the Comforter who teaches us meekness that leads to a hunger for righteousness; that is, instead of merely being willing to forgive, the Holy Spirit creates in us a desire to forgive.

But the real turning point in forgiveness (in my limited experience) is mercy: willingly taking the pain of another into ourselves. When I see only my own pain, I become a slave to the passions that are produced by that pain. When I see the pain of others—and not just see, but enter into the pain of others by weeping with them—then my pain seems to melt away. And with the pain, the power of the passions slips away too. When my life is caught up in caring for others (when I am “losing my life,” to use Jesus’ expression), I find my life returning to me. In serving and loving others, I become more myself.

Someone recently asked me, in the light of this path of transformation, “But how do you keep from becoming a doormat?” No one wants to be dehumanized by another; yet the fear of being a doormat is evidence that one is already a doormat, a doormat to fear. The false masters that dominate us do not live outside us, they live inside us. So long as we are driven by fears and lusts and anger to protect ourselves, to build walls, to not let the other so near that we too might feel their hurt and have to bear some of their burden, then our hearts are not our own, but we are slaves of multiple masters. It is true that many relationships are very sick, so sick that one person “walks all over” the other. But why do we allow such relationships to continue as they are? Why don’t we see our way clear to say “no”—not the “no” of self assertion, but the “no” of love, the “no” that acknowledges that I am not loving you if I let you continue to dehumanize me? We cannot lovingly say “no” to a dehumanizing relationship because we are already doormats to fear and a multitude of other kinds of brokenness in our hearts. And even if we are powerless in a relationship, so that our "no" cannot be heard; still, "no" can be said in our hearts: the "no" of a heart that belongs completely to God and cannot be compromised or owned or dehumanized by anything that comes from the outside.

St. John Chrysostom said that no one can hurt us unless we let them. For the first three hundred years of its existence, Christianity was the religion of the slaves. Slaves have no choice about what happens to them, the relationships they are forced into, or the oppressions they endure. Yet St. Paul says to the Corinthians, “The one who is called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord’s freedman. Likewise he who is called while free is Christ’s slave.” And this truly describes our condition, for whether we become a slave by economic, political or other sorts of external oppressions, or whether we become a slave by passions and fears and a past full of bad choices, it doesn’t matter. Regardless of my past, regardless of my circumstances, regardless of what others do or do not do, I can give my heart to God right now. I can offer to God my poverty. I can mourn my weaknesses. I can receive the Holy Spirit. And I can change.

Change is never easy. It is a process, a ladder that we climb. But we can climb it, even if our husband or wife or children or parents or employer or even our priest or pastor do not seem to be climbing it. I cannot change them, I can only offer myself to God and be changed. And yet there is a promise that if I offer my heart undividedly to God, if with a pure heart I begin to see God, then I may ascend even higher, to become a peacemaker, one whose very presence reveals God to others and draws them toward peace.