![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readoldthingsThe Gospel of Matthew Chapter 5, Verse 6
Patterns
As we reach the Fourth Beatitude, it's worth reconsidering the previous three, and seeing how they work together and build on one another.
The Beatitudes aren't random statements, and they aren't separate from one another. They should be seen, rather, as a program.
A program for the achivement of what?
Of what Jesus has been talking about all along: Changing our Nous and attaining the Kingdom of Heaven. Obviously, all of them should be practiced together, but we can also suppose that they are in the order they are in for a reason. If that's the case, then they can be seen as a set of steps, or a ladder of spiritual development. Each Beatitude is its own particular practice.
The First Beatitude: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." We begin by practicing spiritual poverty, which we defined as the total opening of the soul to God, embodied above all in the Blessed Virgin's statement "My soul magnifies the Lord." Consider those words again: They convey the image of a soul which is like a glass through which a light shines clearly and appears to be magnified, so that we not only see the light through that soul, but see it more perfectly.
The Second Beatitude: "Blessed are those that mourn." In our post on this Beatitude, we mostly focused on mourning or grief as particular acts. This isn't wrong, but it isn't all there is to it, either. If the Beatitudes are a spiritual program, then each Beatitude is a practice. This means that, in a certain sense, we must practice mourning all the time. From this perspective, the world itself is a kind of tomb, and our fall into matter is a death to our true life in the world of spirit. To mourn, then, means to be aware of our condition, confined in the tomb of the body, and turn our attention toward our heavenly home.
The Third Beatitude: "Blessed are the meek." Yesterday, we discussed briefly what is meant by "meekness." To briefly summarize, it isn't weakness or servility, but the kind of gentle strength that comes from having tamed the bestial part of ourselves.
All these build on one another. We begin by opening to God, and rejecting the life of the material world. We continue to by overcoming the lower part of ourselves, the desiring part or epithymia. But do we totally mutilate that part? Do we amputate our desires?
No. Jesus has come like a physician to heal ourselves, not destroy them.
To Hunger, To Thirst
We aren't to destroy the part of ourselves that desires. Instead, we are to direct it-- insofar as this is possible, while we still live in a body and must provide for its needs-- toward goodness, or righteousness. Now righteousness means good deeds, but it means more than that. In the Scriptures, it also refers to God's faithfulness to those who keep his covenants.
Dikaios
It's worth considering the Greek word here. It is δικαιοσύνην, dikaiosunēn, from δίκαιος, dikaios. Plato uses a related word, Dikaisyne, to describe the virtue of Justice in the Republic. As we've seen before, in the Republic Plato describes an ideal city, with three castes of people: Workers, Warriors, and Rulers. Now, each of these corresponds to one of the three parts of the soul: the Appetite or Epithymia, the Strength of Will or Thymos, and the Reason or Nous. In a just state, each member of each social caste is content to do his own work, ruling or being ruled accordingly, not rebelling against the others; in a just soul, then, each element also is content to do its own work.
6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Patterns
As we reach the Fourth Beatitude, it's worth reconsidering the previous three, and seeing how they work together and build on one another.
The Beatitudes aren't random statements, and they aren't separate from one another. They should be seen, rather, as a program.
A program for the achivement of what?
Of what Jesus has been talking about all along: Changing our Nous and attaining the Kingdom of Heaven. Obviously, all of them should be practiced together, but we can also suppose that they are in the order they are in for a reason. If that's the case, then they can be seen as a set of steps, or a ladder of spiritual development. Each Beatitude is its own particular practice.
The First Beatitude: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." We begin by practicing spiritual poverty, which we defined as the total opening of the soul to God, embodied above all in the Blessed Virgin's statement "My soul magnifies the Lord." Consider those words again: They convey the image of a soul which is like a glass through which a light shines clearly and appears to be magnified, so that we not only see the light through that soul, but see it more perfectly.
The Second Beatitude: "Blessed are those that mourn." In our post on this Beatitude, we mostly focused on mourning or grief as particular acts. This isn't wrong, but it isn't all there is to it, either. If the Beatitudes are a spiritual program, then each Beatitude is a practice. This means that, in a certain sense, we must practice mourning all the time. From this perspective, the world itself is a kind of tomb, and our fall into matter is a death to our true life in the world of spirit. To mourn, then, means to be aware of our condition, confined in the tomb of the body, and turn our attention toward our heavenly home.
The Third Beatitude: "Blessed are the meek." Yesterday, we discussed briefly what is meant by "meekness." To briefly summarize, it isn't weakness or servility, but the kind of gentle strength that comes from having tamed the bestial part of ourselves.
All these build on one another. We begin by opening to God, and rejecting the life of the material world. We continue to by overcoming the lower part of ourselves, the desiring part or epithymia. But do we totally mutilate that part? Do we amputate our desires?
No. Jesus has come like a physician to heal ourselves, not destroy them.
To Hunger, To Thirst
We aren't to destroy the part of ourselves that desires. Instead, we are to direct it-- insofar as this is possible, while we still live in a body and must provide for its needs-- toward goodness, or righteousness. Now righteousness means good deeds, but it means more than that. In the Scriptures, it also refers to God's faithfulness to those who keep his covenants.
Dikaios
It's worth considering the Greek word here. It is δικαιοσύνην, dikaiosunēn, from δίκαιος, dikaios. Plato uses a related word, Dikaisyne, to describe the virtue of Justice in the Republic. As we've seen before, in the Republic Plato describes an ideal city, with three castes of people: Workers, Warriors, and Rulers. Now, each of these corresponds to one of the three parts of the soul: the Appetite or Epithymia, the Strength of Will or Thymos, and the Reason or Nous. In a just state, each member of each social caste is content to do his own work, ruling or being ruled accordingly, not rebelling against the others; in a just soul, then, each element also is content to do its own work.
[T]he just man does not permit the several elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of others,—he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and his own law, and at peace with himself; and when he has bound together the three principles within him, which may be compared to the higher, lower, and middle notes of the scale, and the intermediate intervals—when he has bound all these together, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or in some affair of politics or private business; always thinking and calling that which preserves and co-operates with this harmonious condition, just and good action, and the knowledge which presides over it, wisdom, and that which at any time impairs this condition, he will call unjust action, and the opinion which presides over it ignorance.
For one who follows the Path of Jesus, the Epithymia, or Appetite, is given a new job. Not only will it hunger for food and thirst for water, but it will turn its desiring power toward the work of Justice itself. In this way, even the lowest parts of us are raised up and re-created in the image of God.
