“Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Taken out of what seem to be the conventional context, we might
expect to be comforted when we have cause to mourn. In this context, we might
withstand horrible sadness in anticipation of earthly comfort. This comfort will
be all the more soothing and wonderful because we have known the hard times and
they are past. The winds of fortune blow from all directions. Wait for a better
day. Help is coming. This [sadness] too shall pass. A better day is coming. Happy
days will be here again.
We know that it isn’t true. Even when we pray in song, the
way Stephen Foster did, imploring “Hard times, come around no more.”
Times don’t always get better. Sometimes they do. Sometimes
they don’t. Sometimes it just keeps piling on. That’s why the conventional
interpretation for the word “blessed” in the Beatitudes is “happy.”
No, we don’t accept hard times because they will end. We don’t
mourn because our troubles on Earth will end.
We mourn because we anticipate a place beyond Earthly life where mourning will
end and those who have borne it the most will be the happiest to get shed of
it. The Galilean was promising us a better home, a heavenly home, where troubles
will be no more.
That’s not much comfort for those who harbor doubts instead
of faith. Even those who aren’t affected by personal troubles must tremble at
the condition of our country and the world. We recall the words of Matthew
Arnold perhaps, in his poem Lines Written
in Kensington Gardens:
I, on men’s impious uproar hurled,
Think often, as I hear them rave,
That peace has left the upper world,
And now keeps only in the grave.
Arnold found peace in quiet garden. Many find peace in the words
of the Galilean, and bless him for it. A friend of mine from years ago during my
time in the United States Navy, found it another way. We were in temporary duty
at a base in Monterey, California. I had already received orders for Naval
Security Forces at Da Nang. He had no idea where he would go. It didn’t matter.
He hated every aspect of military life. Location made no difference.
His name was Robert and he carried around a number of
problems, some social, some political, some romantic, some internal, and some
external. One day, as we walked through a then-deserted Cannery Row, he looked
at me with sad eyes and said, “You know, when a child is born, they give him a
bucket, and as he goes through life, they shovel crap into it, and he has to
carry it with him through life while it gets heavier and heavier.”
It was somber thought and I remember wondering, at the time,
what John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts would have thought of it. I didn’t think
long on it. One morning, Robert failed to appear at muster. I figured his assignment
had come through.
About two weeks later, shortly before I was to leave, a call
came my work place. Personal calls didn’t pass muster, but they let me take it
out of sorrow for my future, I suppose. A happy voice greeted me. It was Robert.
“Where are you?”
“At the nut-ward at the Treasure Island base in San Francisco,” he said.
“How did you get there?”
“I told them I was giving up my bucket of crap and the Navy
could do what they wanted to with it.” Then the phone went dead.
I never heard from him again.
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| Comfort them? Or test them for drugs? |
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