Visit Tribe of Many Arrows on Etsy. These images are used with their permission,
and I am grateful for these beautiful creations accompanying my reflections this month.
Today, we look at the third Luminous Mystery of the Rosary: the Proclamation of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is a tough mystery to capture through a scripture passage. In Matthew’s Gospel, Part II of his Gospel is considered the Proclamation of the Kingdom. It is Chapters 3-7 and includes the Baptism of Jesus. From his Gospel, I will use the Beatitudes, but it also includes teaching about anger, adultery, love of enemies, praying the Lord’s prayer, dependence on God, judging others and so much more! I read a book by Father Jacques Phillippe a few years ago on the Beatitudes called The Eight Keys to the Kingdom and so I feel that this passage does help cover a lot of what is underscored and elaborated on in parables and other preaching by Jesus later. The other passage I included was the parable of the mustard seed for the Kingdom of God. While all of the Gospels touch on a variety of Jesus’ preaching and teaching, we will focus on these two Gospel passages for imitation, though I feel you could pick up the Gospel and read any of Jesus’ preaching on the kingdom to use for reflection on how to imitate this mystery.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn,
For they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
For they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
For they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
For they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart,
For they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
For they will be called the children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
For theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Matthew 5:3-12(NABRE)He said, “To what shall we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use for it? It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.” With many such parables he spoke the word to them as they were able to understand it. Without parables he did not speak to them, but to his own disciples he explained everything in private. Mark 4:30-34 (NABRE)
I think I’ve mentioned before Fr. Jacques Phillippe’s book, The Eight Keys to the Kingdom, which if you want to go deep in how to live out the beatitudes in your life, that book would be a great resource to really take meditation on this mystery to the next level.
The first beatitude says if we are poor in spirit, the kingdom of God will be ours! Talk about a beatitude that we should want to master. It is so hard because aren’t we so easily proud of ourselves when we make a spiritual breakthrough or develop a really great daily prayer routine. This beatitude reminds us that those things they do not come from us, they come from God. In remembering our faith is a gift from God and everything that stems from it is also a gift from Him, we can be assured that we are faithfully practicing being poor in spirit.
Last year, I read Chesterton’s Orthodoxy and was really moved by his emphasis on how we take the function of all things as a guarantee rather than assume the miracle of it all. He uses several times over the example of the fact an egg becomes a chicken. Let us be amazed at all the things around us—let us realize we are immersed in miracles—a nose that smells, ears that hear, plants that can be widdled down into boards for a home or furniture to sit on or at for a meal. I could go on and on.
I found myself near tears at Mass at the very thought of being present in Church with so many miracles (aka people). There are billions of them on this planet! Let us make ourselves little next to the glory of God and how that surrounds us every day.
Those who mourn…comfort comes. I am intimately familiar with mourning. I lost my younger brother when he was 2 and I was 6. I, at a very young age, became intimately familiar with death, graveyards, and the impact death has on those around you. My husband and I met because a woman who lost her son who had been horrifically murdered counseled my mom who was still dealing with her own grief. This woman introduced Joe and I. Joe had been a friend of her son’s, so Joe too knew grief in the sort of way most of us feel puzzled by.
What I’ve learned from loss like this is loss is never the end, both it is never the end of the legacy of that person and it is never the end of our relationship with them, so we mourn but we mourn with hope. We mourn, but we remember. We mourn but we know we WILL see them again. It is the beauty of the resurrection, knowing that this earthly life is not the end.
There is an eternity when we will be together. We accept that here on earth we have to mourn our time apart from them, but we can be comforted that it is not a final goodbye, rather a see you later. There is also a mourning that comes with broken marriages, debilitating illness, a loved one suffering from addiction. In these things too, we must hold out for hope.
Ask Jesus to help you navigate all that is on your heart in your situation, ask Him for healing, and hold tight to the knowledge that in eternity these things will melt away. I have watched someone with a long-time addiction live in complete denial of this said addiction. I have mourned the reality this person lives in, their belief that they can only live this life numb. It is heart-breaking. I cannot change it. I can only trust that God knows I want this person to know His love and to be healed of this addiction. Whether God does that on this side of life or on the better side of eternity, I have no idea. I trust that He will be healed in God’s time, and I hold on to that.
The other piece of this beatitude is simply the beauty of the Christian community. As part of our Church, you will not mourn alone. So when someone you know in your Church or your community experiences loss, be there for that person. Listen to their stories, let them cry, walk with them in their grief, so that while they do not mourn any less for their loss, they do find themselves comforted that they are not alone, but instead are being loved through their grief and through the process of mourning.
It’s funny when writing about these for imitation purposes—the second part always sounds really good…inheriting land, sign me up! Blessed are the meek…I looked up what this meant and a variety of descriptions come up such as humbly patient and submissive. Mary is often described as meek and lowly, but we know she is the Queen of Heaven and earth. We can rest assured that following her example would certainly be a key to the Kingdom.
What does being humbly patient look like in your life? In my life, I can think of many examples. Not getting short-tempered with a grocery clerk moving more slowly than I would like. Not taking over a task from my child because I think they are doing it too slowly. Greeting a spouse who comes home late for dinner with kindness instead of a sharp word. Allowing a friend to unload whatever is on her mind without trying to match him or her story for story or complaint for complaint.
Meekness would also relate to God, and not being impatient with His timing as it relates to a prayer request or life situation. Let us look for opportunities to be humbly patient in our daily lives. I, for one, am sure there is no shortage of opportunities in this fast-paced world we live in.
If you are reading this, I feel I can make a good, educated guess that you want to live a righteous life. But those words….hunger and thirst…that is some serious longing there, so much so it might cause a little pain, maybe even a little noise in your life.
When you are hungry or thirsty, things physically change in your body. Your mouth becomes dry, maybe even a little sticky. You might find yourself licking your lips, your mind becomes fixated on relieving your thirst. If you are hungry, your stomach might start making funny, even embarrassing, noises. Those noises are likely accompanied by an ache, not the same as a stomach ache, but an ache you know can only be satisfied if you grab a snack or a sandwich. Maybe you have a trail mix in your bag and eat it to hold you over, but it’s not as satisfying as if you had a whole sandwich.
Let’s think about that in terms of righteousness. Are we OK with good enough? We shouldn’t be. None of us are perfect. There is always a thought we shouldn’t be thinking or a moment of impatience when we should’ve been patient; a moment of gossip where there should’ve been silence; a moment of overindulgence when there should’ve been self-control.
Let us want righteousness so much that we can physically feel our missteps and want to correct them immediately. Just as when we are thirsty, we will immediately want a sip of water. Let us in weak moments want to immediately correct from where we’ve gone astray.
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”…sound familiar? I will never forget becoming so aware of this line in the Our Father. It was a time when I was in a big fight with someone and was having a really hard time forgiving the person. I wanted to hold that person accountable, and one day it knocked me over the head that I was basically telling God to hold me just as accountable for my sins as I was holding this person. Yikes! Show mercy!
I don’t even know how else to say it. There will be many times in your life this is very hard to do, but we need to do it because we want God’s mercy. If you attend Sunday Mass and pray the Our Father, you, like me, are holding yourself liable to punishment from God if you are not showing mercy to others. In my case, I had stopped talking to the person…did I really want God to stop talking to me? To shut me out? To not invite me into His kingdom? That is a reality check and a real one.
God is SO merciful and He asks us to be the same. This in some ways harkens back to meekness and being poor in spirit. When we realize how lavishly God has poured out so much on us and how many mistakes and missteps we make on a daily basis, how can we not be merciful to our neighbor who we have done very little for in comparison to what God has done for us? We certainly didn’t die for our neighbor like Jesus died for us. So let’s be forgiving of others, not only because God is forgiving to us but also because He is asking us to be forgiving.
Clean of heart…are you feeling as overwhelmed as I am by proclamation of the Kingdom of God? The good news for me is always that when we are in the Kingdom all of the second half of these verses will be what we are living, but on earth our imitation must be what Jesus calls blessed. I am a yes person, a people pleaser. Some friends have even gone so far to call me saint Nicole (I assure you I am not), because if I am perfectly honest there are times when I am going a good deed, but am internally seething making lists of all the things I’ve had to do on my own that week or having terribly resentful thoughts of what other people are not doing and should have done.
This is by far an area, I have been very slow in making progress. When I find myself wrapped in self-love and oriented on what I am doing, instead of who I am helping, my thoughts can go downhill really fast, like avalanche fast, so much so I can end up in a bad mood and being rude to someone who has no involvement in what I’ve become upset about. When we undertake things, we should undertake them with pure intentions, serving God and serving others.
We should not undertake them to look good, look saintly, for praise and recognition. Likewise, we should not try to discount our bad behaviors as not that bad or just something we do once in a while, thinking God won’t really mind the occasional slip up. We should try to live our best lives in the way God asks. Knowing his mercy and taking advantage of his mercy are too very different things, let’s seek to live our lives with clean hearts, living for God, but trusting in his mercy when our humanity fails us.
Peacemakers…this is making me regret an antagonistic email I sent to our HOA management company yesterday and then started a group chat on how awful their management of our neighborhood has been. I definitely wasn’t thinking of this Beatitude yesterday, but am right now. When we feel put out or annoyed by something, why is our instinct to get others to rally with us, to stir up similar feelings of indignation or being appalled over something?
Similarly related to the above Beatitude, how often does our self-love sow conflict or tension in our homes and our relationships? I know that I can often let my emotions run my mind instead of my mind reigning in my emotions. Instead of trying to communicate something that might be bothering me, I am short, maybe a bit heavy handed closing a cabinet or door, to demonstrate my level of annoyance. My husband perceives my anger but because he becomes annoyed that I am not telling him what’s wrong, we both go reeling in opposite directions instead of trying to work out whatever is going on.
This is true of teenagers, friendships. Satan is a divider. He wants us not talking to each other; he wants us mad and walled up. Jesus asks us to not do those things. He asks us to communicate; he asks us to not hold on to hurt feelings but instead to work it out, to seek His peace. And His peace is important to mention here. He tells us His peace is not the same as the world gives, so often times, we want peace to mean—I’m not mad and you’re not mad and as a result we are all happy and at peace—no conflicts.
Jesus never said there would not be conflict in this life, but he did say he will give us rest, and so let’s not discount going to Him when we are feeling slighted, hurt, angry. Let’s ask for his peace so that in our workplaces, homes, communities, we are not so easily flustered by another’s hurtful or inappropriate words or actions, but instead know that that person’s words or actions do not define us, nor can they touch who we are, because we know God made us perfectly and loves us perfectly.
Our non-reaction to people who are confrontational, or instigators is making peace in our own hearts which is as important as making peace in our homes and with others. I think it’s important to highlight the result part of this beatitude—for they will be called children of God. Several times in the Gospels, we are told to be like a child in order to enter the kingdom of God.
I want to highlight here how easily children tend to forgive and forget. A simple I’m sorry, maybe a hug or handshake and kids are off and running, jumping on a trampoline together, back to their video game; the moment has passed and neither is sitting seething over what the other did five minutes before. If only adults could get through a misunderstanding so easily. In moment’s where we find ourselves holding onto the hurt feelings, let’s be childlike and realize we experience a lot more peace when we allow ourselves to move on instead of holding onto that grudge.
Persecution…when Jesus gave us these Beatitudes persecution was a very obvious thing. Jews were often persecuted even killed by the Romans. And we know that both Romans and Jews alike were disapproving of Christians to the point of confinement, torture or death. Today, we see similarities to this in the Middle East or China, where people are truly physically persecuted or martyred for their faith in Jesus. But for most of us in the Western world, we are free to practice our faith without worry of being jailed or killed.
Persecution takes on a different form in the Western world. It rears its ugly head as a taunting voice, exclusion, dismissal. It can be hard to stand firm in a secular world…My belief in the Catholic faith can invite all sorts of disparaging remarks, jokes, and set you up for being excluded from certain circles. The sermon concludes with listing out people who insult and hate you because of Jesus—your reward will be great in heaven.
Don’t let those remarks or that kind of unforgiving behavior shake you from what you know to be true. Take it in and turn it over to the Lord, because he says the kingdom of heaven is yours! You do not need to respond. He does not tell you to argue with them. He says you’re blessed because you are persecuted for righteousness.
He also says love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so when I say turn it over to the Lord, I mean take that person and say Lord, you know their heart. I pray for them. Help me navigate this, help me let go whatever anger or pride it might be stirring in my heart and let me be persecuted for Your sake. I want to be with You in heaven!
I mean so much to unpack in those beatitudes and this is just a tiny sliver of the proclamation of the kingdom of God. These Beatitudes take focus, intention, and dedication. We will slip, but in the moments we can turn our hearts to Jesus and live like he told us to in challenging earthly moments, which many of these address, we will be BLESSED by Jesus Himself. Our reward will await us in heaven—which is eternity much longer than this short stint we have here on Earth. We can endure—we must!
The other passage I included was the mustard seed. It is a favorite of mine. I have a ring with a little mustard seed in it to remind me of how little I need to give to God for Him to do great things. I want to tie it back to the beatitudes. If we sow what we hear from Jesus in the Beatitudes, we are building up the kingdom of heaven on earth. Our life, our Church become places of rest, safety, solace for those around us.
Jesus said the mustard seed tree provides shade and a place for birds to land. That is who we should be. We should be a place where people can find relief and rest. Our ability to be that will be multiplied by God as long as we take what He has given us and live Jesus (not a typo—a favorite saying of St. Francis de Sales—“Live Jesus”). God will shape our lives in big and unexpected ways so that we might serve others.
The fruit of this mystery is conversion and it should be no surprise when you are imitating what Jesus proclaimed to us that you will be changed. Your life will change. You will be living for the glory of God instead of the fleeting glory of this world. Let’s pray we can have the courage and virtue to continue to imitate the beatitudes and all Jesus taught us in the Gospels.
Visit Tribe of Many Arrows on Etsy. These images are used with their permission, and I am grateful for these beautiful creations accompanying my reflections this month.
If you missed the previous weeks’ reflections, catch them here:
The Joyful Mysteries: Annunciation, Visitation, Birth of Jesus, the Presentation, and the Finding of Jesus in the Temple.
The Sorrowful Mysteries: Agony in the Garden, Scourging at the Pillar, Crowning of Thorns, Carrying of the Cross, Crucifixion.
The Glorious Mysteries: The Resurrection, The Ascension, Pentecost, The Assumption, The Coronation of Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth.
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