{"id":16401,"date":"2018-02-01T09:47:43","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T14:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16401"},"modified":"2018-02-01T09:56:05","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T14:56:05","slug":"blessed-are-those-who-mourn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16401","title":{"rendered":"Blessed Are Those Who Mourn"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Sermon on the Mount: Week 1<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cac.org\/blessed-are-those-who-mourn-2018-02-01\/\"><strong>Blessed Are Those Who Mourn<\/strong><\/a><br \/>\n<strong>Thursday, February 1, 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Blessed are those who mourn: they shall be comforted. <\/em>\u2014Matthew 5:4<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/c_kkm_mWuvI\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nTears are therapeutic and healing, both emotionally and physically. Crying helps the body shed stress hormones and stimulates endorphins. Weeping is a natural and essential part of being human. Eknath Easwaran writes:<\/p>\n<p>We can spend the better part of our lives attempting to construct the perfect personal environment, a kind of bubble that will insulate us against everything that is unpleasant. But sorrow is woven into the very texture of life. Pain, disappointment, depression, illness, bereavement, a sense of inadequacy in our work or our relationships . . . the list could go on and on. . . .<\/p>\n<p>Is there meaning in this pattern, in the inescapable mingling of sorrow and joy? The mystics say there is. If tears are a fact of life, they have several lessons to teach us, and the first is to learn to keep on an even keel through life\u2019s inevitable storms. . . . [1]<\/p>\n<p>The Syrian Fathers Ephrem and Simeon weren\u2019t as familiar in Western Christianity as the Greek and Latin Fathers after the early centuries of the Church. The Greek and Latin Fathers tended to filter the Gospel through the head; the Syrian Fathers\u2019 theology was much more localized in the body. They actually proposed that tears be a sacrament in the Church. Saint Ephrem went so far as to say until you have cried you don\u2019t know God.<\/p>\n<p>Most of us think we know God\u2014and ourselves\u2014through ideas. Yet corporeal, embodied theology acknowledges that perhaps weeping will allow us to know God much better than ideas. In this Beatitude, Jesus praises those who can enter into solidarity with the pain of the world and not try to remove or isolate themselves from its suffering. This is why Jesus says the rich person often can\u2019t see the Kingdom, because they spend too much time trying to make tears unnecessary and even impossible.<\/p>\n<p>Jesus describes those who grieve as feeling the pain of the world. Weeping over our sin and the sin of the world is an entirely different response than self-hatred or hatred of others. Grief allows one to carry the dark side, to bear the pain of the world without looking for perpetrators or victims, but instead recognizing the tragic reality that both sides are caught up in. Tears from God are always <em>for everyone, <\/em>for our universal exile from home. \u201cIt is Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted\u201d (Jeremiah 31:15). I am grateful that the new emergence of hospice work, bereavement ministries, and formal \u201cgrief work\u201d seems to indicate we are beginning to understand this. In Men\u2019s Rites of Passage, the \u201cday of grief\u201d is often the turning point toward a man\u2019s initiation. Men finally discover that so much of what they thought was anger was actually sadness, loss, and grief. [2]<\/p>\n<p>Tears seem ridiculous in a culture like ours which is so focused on diversions and entertainment, and are especially a stumbling block to men. Crying will make us look vulnerable. So many men hold back tears. Is it no wonder men don\u2019t live as long as women, on average? We must teach all young people how to cry. Now, in my later years, I finally understand why Saints Francis and Clare cried so much, and why the saints spoke of \u201cthe gift of tears.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>___________<\/p>\n<div class=\"row title-row\">\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"utmost-devo-title col col-sm-12 col-xs-12\">\n<h2 class=\"entry-title\">The Call of God<\/h2>\n<h4>By <a href=\"https:\/\/utmost.org\/oswald-chambers-bio\">Oswald Chambers<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"clearfix\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"row entry-meta\">\n<div class=\"col-sm-12\">\n<div id=\"key-verse-box\">\n<h4>Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel\u2026 \u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?version=31&amp;search=1+Corinthians+1%3A17\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">1 Corinthians 1:17<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-sm-4\">\n<div class=\"top-sharing\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"top-rule\"><\/div>\n<section class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"post-content\">\n<p>Paul states here that the call of God is to preach the gospel. But remember what Paul means by \u201cthe gospel,\u201d namely, the reality of redemption in our Lord Jesus Christ. We are inclined to make sanctification the goal of our preaching. Paul refers to personal experiences only by way of illustration, never as the end of the matter. We are not commissioned to preach salvation or sanctification\u2014 we are commissioned to lift up Jesus Christ (see\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=John+12:32\">John 12:32<\/a>). It is an injustice to say that Jesus Christ labored in redemption to make me a saint. Jesus Christ labored in redemption to redeem the whole world and to place it perfectly whole and restored before the throne of God. The fact that we can experience redemption illustrates the power of its reality, but that experience is a byproduct and not the goal of redemption. If God were human, how sick and tired He would be of the constant requests we make for our salvation and for our sanctification. We burden His energies from morning till night asking for things for ourselves or for something from which we want to be delivered! When we finally touch the underlying foundation of the reality of the gospel of God, we will never bother Him anymore with little personal complaints.<\/p>\n<p>The one passion of Paul\u2019s life was to proclaim the gospel of God. He welcomed heartbreak, disillusionment, and tribulation for only one reason\u2014 these things kept him unmovable in his devotion to the gospel of God.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p>_<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sermon on the Mount: Week 1 Blessed Are Those Who Mourn Thursday, February 1, 2018 Blessed are those who mourn: they shall be comforted. \u2014Matthew 5:4 Tears are therapeutic and healing, both emotionally and physically. Crying helps the body shed stress hormones and stimulates endorphins. Weeping is a natural and essential part of being human. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16401"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16401"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16403,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16401\/revisions\/16403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}