The Beatitudes are the blueprint for society and the Church
The Beatitudes are the map for the renewal of the world — divine principles that heal both the individual and society, by reflecting the life of Christ Himself.
The Beatitudes are the map for the renewal of the world — divine principles that heal both the individual and society, by reflecting the life of Christ Himself.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How the Beatitudes reveal the eternal pattern of Christ’s own character, anticipating the life of heaven.
That they form the living law of both supernatural and natural society, perfecting each without destroying its order.
Why their power to renew and heal remains constant, even when human hearts grow cold or corrupt.
Coleridge shows us that the Beatitudes contain the secret of mankind’s restoration — the enduring remedy for every age of decay.
For more context on this series, see Part I.
The Beatitudes
The Preaching of the Beatitudes
Chapter IX
St. Matt. v. 3-10; Story of the Gospels, § 31
Burns and Oates, London, 1876.
(Read on All Saints)
Their relation to the heavenly state
In thus rising beyond and above all the accidental and transient distinctions which divide the citizens of the kingdom of heaven in its present stage, however important those distinctions may be in themselves and in their possible consequences, the Beatitudes reveal their own essential, permanent, and fundamental relations to that future state of the children of God from which their name is derived, and of which they are, as has been said, in some sort an anticipation. They are the lineaments of that character of our Blessed Lord Himself, resemblance to which it is the work of the Holy Ghost to fashion the souls in which He dwells.
They are the true ‘pattern shown on the Mount’1—delivered as precepts on the Mount of the Beatitudes, exemplified in all the words and works of the Lawgiver Himself, and at last nailed to the Cross in His Person on Mount Calvary, where He finally won for those who would follow Him the blessings which He has attached to poverty of spirit, meekness and mourning, to hunger and thirst after justice, to mercifulness and purity of heart, where He was the great Peacemaker because He was the Son of God, and gained the kingdom of heaven because He was persecuted for the sake of justice.
Their relation to Christian society
In another respect also they seem to anticipate, not only the perfect blessedness of each several soul which will hereafter enjoy the vision of God, but that special feature of the felicity of heaven of which we can at present feel that it will cause some of the tenderest and most exquisite of the joys which await us there, without being able as yet to understand their intensity.
The happiness and perfection of a society must be greater in proportion to the capacity for union and mutual intimacy and affection between its members, and the time for Christians fully to know, perfectly to love and be united one to another, has not yet come. But the Beatitudes have a direct tendency to prepare the way for this perfect society hereafter, and even with regard to the present state of humanity they have an office of this character.
There are sayings and passages in the New Testament which seem to speak in wonderful language of the Body of Christ and the mutual offices of its members. St. Paul, for instance, mentions our Lord as the Head of the Body, unto Whom we are, as he says, ‘to grow up;’ ‘from Whom the whole Body, being compacted and fitly joined together, by what every joint supplieth, according to the operation in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in charity.’2
The two societies
The Church is the fulfilment of this description, both in the varied offices of the several members, and in the spirit or life-blood of charity which animates them all and is their bond of union.
But our Blessed Lord, Who has founded the Church, has also elevated and ennobled the natural society of which God when He created man was the author and guardian, and the laws which He has given in the Beatitudes are the principles of that elevation and ennoblement. For the natural and the supernatural societies are identical in their members as in their Author.
It cannot therefore be, that any new and more powerful means of interior and spiritual perfection which He vouchsafes to bestow upon these members should not tend with marvellous force to the good of the society, whether natural or supernatural, which by His ordinance is composed of them. To raise men one by one higher in sanctity and spiritual stature is to make them better for every end for which their Creator intended them, and it belongs to the nature of man, who is made for society, that whatever he gains morally or spiritually for himself he gains for all around him.
If human society were an artificial institution, arranged by mutual compact, and not enacted by the Creator, the Beatitudes which come from Him might come into collision with its principles. As, on the other hand, society is the creation of God, it cannot but be made more perfect and more happy by the working of these great laws.
Characteristics and possible effects of the Beatitudes
Thus, the Beatitudes are, as has been said, the great principles of perfection in the New Kingdom of our Lord, founded upon that clear insight into the truth as to God, ourselves, His rights, and our duties and prospects, and the world around us, which is furnished by the gift of faith, which perfects reason, and is itself brought to perfection by the teaching of the Holy Ghost, in those souls which are obedient to His guidance, and in whom His gifts do not lie idle.
They are promulgated by our Lord with sovereign authority—an authority which, as has been remarked, recalls the act of God in blessing the world which He had made. The very form in which these great principles are set forth reveals the condescending and beneficent character of the King of the New Kingdom; and we may now add that the Beatitudes are so couched as to be the laws of the Christian society as well as of Christian souls, one by one. They have a distinctly social character, and contain the blessing of the world at large, as well as of those persons in whose souls they are made perfect.
The order in which they are arranged, of which more may be said hereafter, is the order of the regeneration of society, and a sort of prophecy of the history of the Church. It is by means of the principles which are embodied in the Beatitudes that a Christian community was formed in the world, which, without altering the natural organization of society, penetrated it in every direction, breathing into it a new life and spirit, and thus healing the wounds and miseries which had so long afflicted mankind.
The actual effects
It is true that never as yet have the principles of the Beatitudes dominated the whole world; and that, when we speak of them as having regenerated society, we speak of their tendency and power rather than of their actual and historical effect.
But the same may be said of any other manifestation of truth or communication of healing grace. The sacrifice of the Cross is of infinite efficacy, and by virtue of it a new Creation has come into existence. But the actual results of what our Lord has done and suffered and purchased correspond rather to the disappointment which He allowed to cloud His soul at the time of the Agony in the Garden, than to the intrinsic power of His work, or even to the glowing language in which the fruit of that work has been described by the Evangelical Prophet.
The souls in which the grace which our Lord has left behind Him is allowed to accomplish all that it can accomplish, are few indeed; and what is true of single souls is true of that multitude and community of single souls of which the Church is made up, and of the teeming world around her, which she has the mission as well as the power to convert and transform and beautify, with all the glories of the creation of grace.
She shows her Divine origin, her heavenly mission, her supernatural gifts, by what she does, because any one of her countless triumphs is the result of a power and a presence which is nothing short of divine. If she had suffered greater losses and endured more relentless opposition and persecution than she has actually suffered, she would still have proved herself to be what she claims to be by evidence which no human reason could gainsay.
But what is enough for testimony is not enough for complete success, and it is for a witness that the Gospel is to be preached to all nations. The gates of hell have never yet prevailed, and never will prevail against her; but she is not until the end entirely to vanquish the gates of hell. The Beatitudes contain a philosophy of Christian life which might long ago have regenerated society, and which can always, as far as it is allowed to work, elevate those whom it penetrates to a state of happy peace and security.
They are fraught with the healing of the nations, and, as far as they have been allowed to work, the nations have been healed. Their power is not less now than when they were first uttered by our Lord upon the Mount. They can never grow old, for they are laws which came from the Heart of Him Who is eternal, Who knows the needs of the creatures He has made, and has power to heal all their maladies.
Over and over again Christian society may become diseased to the core, for the concupiscences of nature are fresh in every succeeding generation and in every child of Adam that comes into the world.
But over and over again Christian society can be healed, for, as the Wise Man says, God ‘hath made the nations of the world for health,’3 and that health is stored up for them in the undying legislation of the Beatitudes.
The Beatitudes
The Preaching of the Beatitudes
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Heb. viii. 5, Exodus xxv. 40.
Ephes. iv. 16.
Wisdom i. 14
Blessings and appreciation from Sydney Australia.