Mourning, Raging, and Self-Absorption

4. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.                     

8. Blessed are the pure/clean in heart, for they will see God.

In my first post I began to describe how the beatitudes can be understood as a tool for contemplative prayer. The beatitudes can be arranged into parallel statements that offer an initial starting place, or challenge to the heart (the challenge in Matt.5:4  is to mourn), and a goal, the development of a grace  (the grace grown in Matt.5:8 is purity of heart). This week I will begin by talking about contemplative mourning. Next week I will attempt to address purity of heart. 

Jesus’ call to mourn follows directly from his challenge to his followers to recognize their poverty of spirit. An impoverished spirit will have reason to mourn. We mourn our own failings and inner poverty, as well as the spiritual poverty of the world we live in which is evidenced in the cruelty, corruption and selfishness that ruins much that could be good in the world. The challenge of mourning is meant to open us to God’s gracious work in the heart. Contemplative mourning can develop in us a purity or cleansing of the thoughts and desires of the heart. 

Everyone of us are shaped and moved by the thoughts of our hearts, and we speak or do not speak, act or do not act, value, understand, conceive of ourselves — out of our inner thoughts. Our thoughts affect how we feel, how we experience the world, the way evaluate our experiences. As result, when we are full of anxious thoughts or bitter thoughts, or hopeful, or joyful thoughts — our words, our moods, our actions reflect these things. We all, in a sense, live in reaction to the thoughts and beliefs of our hearts.

Jesus challenges his followers at the level of the thought-life of the heart, to react to both personal and societal sin with mourning — to be “blessed” through mourning. However the difficulty with Jesus’ challenge is that we already have ways of blessing ourselves in the face of societal and personal sin. 

Two responses to sin, that come most easily to my mind, are raging and self-absorption. Raging focuses on the sins of society and cries out for vengeance. Self-absorption focuses on oneself and either wallows in guilt or simply ignores society in order to be caught up in its own little world. The one blesses itself with a kind of false catharsis of raging and venting which only feeds our indignation. The other blesses itself with another kind of false catharsis of intense guilt feelings, which feed our self-absorption.

Mourning, on the other hand, is about lament, which has to do with crying out in sorrow to God over sin. Lament is understood in scripture to be both a personal expression of grief over sin (see Psalm 25) and a complaint against societal sin (see Psalm 4). 

To contemplate one’s own deep selfishness and lack of love, through the sinful passions such as pride, greed, lust, anger, laziness, discontentment, etc. — and, at the same time, to recognize that the evil attitudes which drive the abuses and wars, and corruptions, and ruin of this world are no different than the attitudes of our own hearts — this is what leads us to a true sense of lament and mourning. This is the mourning that Jesus calls “Blessed.”

How does this blessed response to mourning lead us to the grace of a pure heart? Through the gospel! Mourning over sin with an understanding of the gospel can lead us to a greater understanding of the depths of God’s grace toward us as the depths of our sin are exposed. 

When we can accept our failings and also see that they are a participation in the hateful failings of our society — and when we can recognize that God’s response to us has been to offer God’s-Self up to rejection, criticism, suffering and torturous death so that our debt of sin could be paid — this gracious contemplative way of mourning begins a cleansing in us in at least two ways…

First, contemplative mourning cleanses us from the rage and/or self-absorption which tend to dominate our hearts. These are replaced by a humility in which we see ourselves as we truly are — that we share in the same sinful attitudes of heart, sinful desires, motivations, and thoughts as those we would condemn. We are no worse or better sinners than others.

     Instead of separating ourselves from others, either out of pride or self-condemnation, we recognize in ourselves the selfishness and corruptions of the world, but we see ourselves in the light of the gift of God’s grace which is not only ours in Christ, but also offered to the world. 

Second, contemplative mourning is cleansing in the sense that it helps us to consider the utter sinfulness and ruin of our own selfish sinful passions. Contemplative mourning over sin develops within our hearts a rich, imaginative resistance against the sin that destroys society and our own lives, and drives us to find help and deliverance from God. 

In the end mourning can lead to great comfort. We no longer need to rage or to condemn ourselves because God has condemned God’s-Self in our place. Contemplative mourning becomes a way to receive grace and find greater freedom.