Matthew under the arm 12
I have just felt an arm around my shoulder.... Yes, it's yours Columba. You noticed I was not really 'present' to the walking - to the pilgrimage. It feels, as you hold me, as if I am caught up into the passion of your single-heartedness in Christ. A simple touch from you, Columba, is a blessing, a beatitude. Oh dear! I can't never remember how many beatitudes there are in the Gospel. Goodness! Me a Bishop and I don't know the Beatitudes, by heart?!! ... What I want you to do, Columba, is open your Gospel and read the Beatitudes to me. We'll sit on this stone for a bit. I'll close my eyes, eat my bacon sandwich and listen to you... Then I'll repeat what you have read, verse by verse... as you eat your bacon sandwich...
Matthew 5.1-12
The trouble about the term ‘Beatitudes’ is that it feels like a collection of objects. ("I wonder where I left the beatitudes... I must have dropped them somewhere!") No. They are processes or ways of God. These verses contain the eight ways of being brought into God. A beatitude or blessing is a active sign of this process. We are being brought to live in unity with God. The deeper this unity, the less I have to force the response that is the affect of the blessing on those around me. It happens! The temptation is to turn my living with God into a work project. The eight ways are the ways of Christ in you in the whole of your lives. Spiritual integration begins to happen when you see your prayer and the rest of your life affect each other and become one. Try to recall a recent feeling of being blessed which brought your into a sense of oneness....
+Martin
Argyll and The Isles
Let the poverty of your heart draw you into My Way
It is worth remembering the Beatitudes, the ‘eight ways’ of blessing ‘by heart’. To do so is to allow them to enter deeply into you. There is a greater chance that they become part of you. Another approach to praying this passage is to focus on just one of the ‘ways’, as the sentence above illustrates. Poverty is not a pejorative judgement of something that you lack – it is a willingness to be empty in order to receive. One of the methods of letting yourself experience this spiritual emptiness is to imagine that Christ’s eyes are fixed on you as he speaks the words of the Beatitudes. So doing, you will recognise the poverty in you and long more and more for the gaze of Christ.
Matthew 5.1-12
The trouble about the term ‘Beatitudes’ is that it feels like a collection of objects. ("I wonder where I left the beatitudes... I must have dropped them somewhere!") No. They are processes or ways of God. These verses contain the eight ways of being brought into God. A beatitude or blessing is a active sign of this process. We are being brought to live in unity with God. The deeper this unity, the less I have to force the response that is the affect of the blessing on those around me. It happens! The temptation is to turn my living with God into a work project. The eight ways are the ways of Christ in you in the whole of your lives. Spiritual integration begins to happen when you see your prayer and the rest of your life affect each other and become one. Try to recall a recent feeling of being blessed which brought your into a sense of oneness....
+Martin
Argyll and The Isles
Let the poverty of your heart draw you into My Way
It is worth remembering the Beatitudes, the ‘eight ways’ of blessing ‘by heart’. To do so is to allow them to enter deeply into you. There is a greater chance that they become part of you. Another approach to praying this passage is to focus on just one of the ‘ways’, as the sentence above illustrates. Poverty is not a pejorative judgement of something that you lack – it is a willingness to be empty in order to receive. One of the methods of letting yourself experience this spiritual emptiness is to imagine that Christ’s eyes are fixed on you as he speaks the words of the Beatitudes. So doing, you will recognise the poverty in you and long more and more for the gaze of Christ.
posted by Martin at 9:00 pm
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