When you love someone, you want to find out everything about them; and also share your experiences, strengths and weaknesses with them in order to grow together in mutual love and support. Yet, it is almost impossible to learn everything about someone else because of the demands of life, limited time and our fallen nature – but we can choose to learn the most important things about them and ourselves.
For those who want to grow spiritually, it is important to love God above all things, and then love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus Christ and his Mother, Mary, do this perfectly, and they call us to keep learning, loving and practicing our Catholic faith.
Since God is all loving, all powerful, all just and all merciful, we want to know him by prayerfully reading the word of God, the Bible, which has two main parts. The Old Testament wherein we read about how God creates every human being in his image and likeness, gives us the Ten Commandments of life and love, and how mankind falls short of following God’s laws, but not without hope in a savior, born of a woman, as de-clared by God’s Old Testament priests, prophets and kings.
The second part of the Bible is the New Testament wherein we read about Christ’s birth from Mary, his ministry of teaching and healing, his establishing God’s church, and his Paschal Mystery: Christ’s suffering, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven which offers the human family the grace to live lives of holiness, and thus attain the perfect life of heaven.
In today’s gospel, Jesus tells his disciples about this good news of the Paschal Mystery, but Peter does not want Jesus to suffer, resists his divine teaching and receives a rebuke from Christ: “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do… Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For who-ever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” Cf. Mk. 8:30-35.
To follow Christ is to fulfill the Ten Commandments and live deeply the Beatitudes, which can be seen as the external and interior principles of a Christian life, respectively. It greatly benefits us when we meditate and memorize the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, so that we might know Christ and follow after him.
Pope Leo the Great (400-461 A.D.) reigned as Pope for 21 years and wrote extensively about the Beatitudes of Christ, to benefit all. He is known for turning away Atilla the Hun from invading and sacking Rome
in 452 A.D. In the following he writes about those blessed who are “pure of heart” and who are “peacemakers.”
The blessedness of seeing God is justly promised to the pure of heart. For the eye that is unclean would not be able to see the brightness of the true light, and what would be happiness to clear minds would be a torment to those that are defiled. Therefore, let the mists of worldly vanities be dispelled, and the inner eye be cleansed of all the filth of wickedness, so that the soul’s gaze may feast serenely upon the great vision of God.
(It is amazing how some people want to distort reality to their way of thinking, instead of changing their lives to conform to God’s natural life and supernatural law of grace found fully in Christ’s seven sacraments, beginning with Baptism that leads us to the perfect vi-sion of God - heaven).
It is to the attainment of this goal that the next words refer: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. This blessedness, dearly be-loved, does not derive from any casual agreement or from any and every kind of harmony, but it pertains to what the Apostle [Paul] says: Be at peace before the Lord, and to the words of the prophet [David, Psalm 119:165]: Those who love your law shall enjoy abundant peace; for them it is no stumbling block.
Even the most intimate bonds of friendship and the closest affinity of minds cannot truly lay claim to this peace if they are not in agreement with the will of God… But those who keep God ever in their hearts, and are anxious to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, never dissent from the eternal law as they speak the prayer of faith. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
These then are the peacemakers; they are bound together in holy harmony and are rightly given the heavenly title of sons of God, coheirs with Christ. And this is the reward they will receive for their love of God and neighbor: when their struggle with all temptations is finally over, there will be no further adversities to suffer or scandal to fear; but they will rest in the peace of God undisturbed, through our Lord who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen.
Peace in Christ and Mary,
Fr. Thomas McCabe
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