Conforming (phase 2), Jesus Teaches the Way - Arriving to a Decision (cont.)(step17), session 1

Rather than rehash a couple sessions which I found less than inspiring the first time around, and in the interest of making sure to arrive at Palm Sunday ready for step 21 as recommended by the calendar, and given that steps 17-19 each contains scripture passages for 7 sessions, I am forgoing further repetition of the reflections of step 16 in the interest of moving on to step 17.

I like the prayer focus for this session, which was the same in step 16, to ask for an intimate knowledge of our Lord, who has become man for me, that I may love Him more and follow Him more closely. I especially appreciate this in light of my understanding of what it means to know another in what I consider the truly biblical sense (about which I've written a little near the bottom of this post, and which I'm sure I've expanded more on elsewhere but can't find anything on a quick search). The knowledge we are to have of God is not to be primarily about him in such a way that we understand "how God ticks," as if such a thing were possible given that we rarely truly understand how our most intimate lifelong companions tick. Rather, we are called to know God in relationship that deepens throughout our life and fills us with an ever greater love in return for the initiating love that God has for us.

So this first session focuses on the Beatitudes from St. Matthew's gospel (Mt, 5, 1-12, though for some reason they've only listed through verse 11, which is a silly stopping point).  Initially I felt disappointed, because I feel as if I've hashed through this passage my whole life. But in the context of the aforementioned prayer for these steps, when we see them as a means of knowing Jesus better, they aren't so intimidating and unapproachable, and I have certainly not nearly exhausted them.

Sometimes I think that we think of Jesus as being "beyond the beatitudes," as if they comprise a lesson that he imparts to us without having any need to heed them himself.  Particularly, a couple of them seem antithetical to how we understand Jesus. We don't think of him as being very "poor in spirit" or "meek," for instance.  Yet as we look at the arc of his life, we may recognize times when he was very much the embodiment of each beatitude, though there are certainly some which he clearly modeled throughout his life and others of which we have fewer examples.

So I reflect on each of these beatitudes now as an insight into who Jesus is and how he lived, thinking of a specific example in which Jesus demonstrated it. And in doing so I find that I don't necessarily gain a better intellectual understanding of Jesus, but that instead I know and love him just a bit more deeply.