Last summer, I had the opportunity spend a day at Six Flags, something I’d never thought I would do in my consecrated life! At one point, we rode an intense roller coaster called the “Raging Bull”. (The name fits the ride) Fearful and full of excitement as we crept to the peak of not only the ride but the entire park, I glanced down at the mammoth structure of the roller coaster. Suddenly I was briefly distracted from my emotions by a totally different perception: how many millions of dollars it took to make that ride? (Maybe it was due to the economic crisis that I had these thoughts.)
Just before plunging into the almost complete drop, I looked around at all the other structures and the same question came to mind: How many millions, billions of dollars are invested here and through every amusement park throughout the country? In a flash came images of the people of Haiti and from the movie Slum Dog Millionaire. The warped contrast of the two worlds left me with a sick and helpless feeling. Then we plunged, and I drowned the pain and exhilaration together with one question, why Lord? Our hearts are full of experiences from many different desires, longings, sentiments and passions. Many times they are of the utmost extremity, clashing contradictions. We don’t understand it.
Although we can’t resolve all the injustices and errors of our society, we can make an effort to guide what goes on inside our own hearts. Isn’t injustice the source for the evils of our world? “Injustice, the fruit of evil, does not have exclusively external roots; its origin lies in the human heart, where the seeds are found of a mysterious cooperation with evil…” (Message of Benedict XVI for Lent 2010, October 30, 2009). The heart can experience contradictions, exuberant joy and wallowing sadness, an outpouring of love and surges of anger, abounding trust and insecurity and resentment. Many times the experiences of the heart are subtle; we know we want one thing but we do the opposite.
How do we form the heart? Christ gives us some guidelines in the Beatitudes which could help us find the right interior disposition in facing life’s crosses and our own interior battles.
The Beatitudes, Mt 5: 3-11
“Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”
Those who are truly poor are content with whatever is put on their plate. To be EMPTY of self, always allows the space for God to move and lead as He chooses. Total freedom given to God teaches us how to let go of egoism, of being too focused on how things affect us. If only we could live at least one whole day without ANY concern for ourselves! This is what it means to be poor in spirit; this is love. Even Mother Theresa who lived material poverty to the fullest, understood that true poverty starts in the heart, “Our poverty should be true Gospel poverty: gently tender, glad and open hearted, always ready to give an expression of love. Poverty is love before it is renunciation: To love it is necessary to give. To give it is necessary to be free from selfishness.” (From the Rule of the Missionaries of Charity). If we are empty of ourselves, then our hearts are “full” because “theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.
“Blessed are they who mourn for they will be comforted”
Those who mourn with faith know how to suffer in a way that is dignified by their firm trust in God. We need to have enough self mastery over the heart so that no matter the depth of pain, one is still able to trust in a greater vision that exists outside the immediate suffering. Although the heart recoils from the pain, it can grow in its trust in God the Father, a God who is love. Despite appearances, one learns to trust in a plan that cannot be seen or touched. Blessed are they who mourn this way because it allows their heart to take a leap of faith and not to become buried in the suffering or weighed down by the past. Instead, the heart accepts and quietly embraces the pain. In this way, one advances toward the future, to a maturity in love. This love becomes comfort when one understands that this is loving, even if painfully loving.
“Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the land”
One who is meek is also simple. They know how to accept everything from the Hand of God. They are not creating a boxing match inside the heart with everything that doesn’t go their way or according to their likes. To be meek is to live with gratitude. We are created from nothingness and only came into existence because He LOVED us into it. Meekness experiences gratitude deeply because it experiences being a creature very deeply. This plants us on the ground. Sometimes life sends us painful reminders, even tragic experiences that leave us completely helpless and distraught.
In Regnum Christi we learned of the true life of our founder. This has been an unwanted spiritual “grounding”. We experience our littleness, our own mistakes and we discover who we really are: creatures, imperfect servants. Falling deeper into to the earth we learn to start life anew. By being grounded well in the heart, we inherit the land, the true richness of God’s love.
“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied”
We have such plenitude in first world countries and yet others are eating dirt because they have no food. We eat an exquisite meal and a few hours later it is totally forgotten. We recognize that there are deeper yearnings of hunger. Our hearts desire so many things: happiness, fulfillment, peace, to be loved, etc. Christ’s hunger and thirst is beyond what we can imagine. We hunger for what is good but not always what is truly good for us. The desires of our heart can be deceiving. If we can guide our hearts to let go of the ephemeral and look toward deeper, lasting values then perhaps we will experience the true satisfaction in our hearts, which were made for Him.
“Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy”
To be merciful with others usually sprouts from a personal experience of the need for mercy due to own wretchedness and weakness. We want to forgive deeply when we have been forgiven deeply. Each time we forgive more we expand the capacity of our hearts. He wants us to forgive BEYOND and ABOVE what we THINK we are capable of forgiving. We are all wounded in some way. But wounds are not to be kept locked up deep inside us. God permitted them so that we could STRETCH our hearts. If not, our hearts can shrivel up like a raisin if we don’t forgive. We need to strengthen and broaden capacity to forgive, on it depends our own forgiveness “forgive us our trespasses AS we forgive those who trespass against us”. Jesus tells us how to forgive, “as” we forgive. A lot rides on those two letters: AS, but this is where we will also be shown mercy.
“Blessed are the clean of heart for they will see God”
In scriptures the heart really refers to the inner dynamism of the person: the heart, mind and will, the whole person, the CENTER of who you are, what you seek. To be pure of heart is not merely being free of evil desires or of our blinding passions. It also means to be single-hearted, focused on the “one thing necessary” and that one thing is Christ. The pure of heart know how to find and see God now, still on this earth. They discover God in their daily lives, in everything that happens around them. God is not a distant being. They walk with Him every day and therefore they see God now.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God”
We all seek peace. We seek peace at home, with our friends, at work and in our hearts. Peace doesn’t come from relaxing on a sunny beach with a strawberry margarita in one hand. True peace extends from the soul outward, not from the exterior inward. We will never find peace if that is the only way we look for it. God is love. True love between two people can only exist when there is some type of communication and relationship. We must be in relationship with God to know His love, to have true peace. The only way to come into relationship with God is to communicate with Him: to pray. He is our creator. We need Him. We need to know Him. He already knows us. Our hearts will find peace in deepening our knowledge of Him when we turn towards Him. Then we become like Him; we become His children.
“Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven”
What was Christ thinking when He was being persecuted by the Sadducees and high priests, when He was betrayed by Judas, when Peter denied Him, when the disciples left Him during the way of the cross, His passion and death? We are judged in small ways almost every day in so many small ways: misunderstandings or a lack of communication, etc. But, even if some unfortunate persecution should come upon us one day, Christ teaches us how to respond. He knew that His love was redemptive. Whoever learns how to love with a heart like Christ’s adds to the redemptive love in the world. The kingdom of God enters into their heart and into the hearts of others.
In the end, it is all about contemplating the heart of Christ. It sounds so cliché but it is in contemplating how His heart would respond that we discover the answers to the struggles we have deep down inside. I only need to open my heart to have “eyes that see”. In Mt 8:17 Christ asks the disciples “Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?” Why can’t our hearts see clearly sometimes? Are they hardened? Evil begins in the interior of man, not the exterior. My heart is “my space”, only I can put something there or take something out. It all begins with me.
