February 17, 2025 • 33 mins
🎙 Episode #7: Fr. John Dear & Sr. Joan Chittister on “Jesus and the Beatitudes” (Part 1 of 3)
📆 Drops Feb. 17, 2025
What if the Beatitudes weren’t just comforting words, but a blueprint for a way of life? What if Jesus wasn’t just offering hope, but a call to action in a world of injustice, violence, and oppression?
In this powerful first episode of a three-part series, Fr. John Dear sits down with the legendary Sr. Joan Chittister to unpack the Beatitudes—not as prayers, but as bold, countercultural ways of living that challenge systems of power. "The 8 Beatitudes of life are actually the 8 attitudes for life!" Sr. Joan says. Together, they dive deep into:
💠Blessed are the poor in spirit– What does it mean to let go of ego and privilege in a world obsessed with power?
💠Blessed are those who mourn– How do we turn grief into action in the face of war, climate collapse, and social injustice?
💠Blessed are the meek, humble, and gentle– Why is humility a revolutionary force for peace?
Sr. Joan doesn’t hold back—"The Beatitudes are not prayers of supplication: they are the reality of everything we could get out of life right now". She speaks truth to power as a fierce advocate for justice, peace, and human dignity. A Benedictine sister, activist, and author of 60+ books, she’s spent her life challenging the Church, political systems, and all of us to live out our faith with courage.
🔥 This is a conversation you don’t want to miss.
🎧 Listen now. Get inspired. Change the world.
Sr. Joan Chittister is an internationally known lecturer and teacher, a columnist for The National Catholic Reporter, and the author of 60 books including The Time Is Now; Becoming Fully Human; Radical Spirit; Aspects of the Heart; The Gift of Years; and The Rule of Benedict. She has served as Benedictine prioress and Benedictine federation president, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women.
👉 Learn more about Sr. Joan Chittister:joanchittister.org
👉 Join the movement for nonviolence:beatitudescenter.org
#Beatitudes #RadicalFaith #NonviolentResistance #JesusTheRevolutionary #Peacemaking
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. I'm John, Father John Deere, and today I'm speaking
(00:20):
with my friend, author, teacher, and lecturer, Sister Joan Chidister. This podcast is a project
of www.beattitudecenter.org, where you can find many other podcasts and regular Zoom
programs on the nonviolence of Jesus and practicing nonviolence and working for a more just, more
(00:41):
peaceful world. So I'd like to begin with a little prayer. So I invite everyone listening
to just to take a deep breath wherever you are and to relax and to center yourself again
and enter into the presence of the God of peace who loves you infinitely, personally,
and everyone everywhere. And let's welcome the nonviolent Jesus here with us and ask
(01:07):
for whatever graces and blessings we need to follow him more faithfully and do God's
will. God of peace, thank you for all the blessings of life and love and peace that
you give us. Be with us now as we reflect on the life and teachings and the beatitudes
(01:30):
of Jesus, that we might follow him more faithfully and do your will and do our part to help end
war and poverty, racism and sexism, violence, nuclear weapons and environmental destruction,
that we might welcome your reign of universal love, universal compassion, and universal
(01:51):
peace here on earth in Jesus name. Amen. It's my great pleasure to welcome today my friend
Sister Joan Chidister to reflect together on Jesus and the beatitudes. As many listeners
know, Sister Joan is an internationally known lecturer and teacher, a columnist for the
National Catholic Reporter, and the author of some 60 books, including The Time Is Now,
(02:17):
Becoming Fully Human, Radical Spirit, The Gift of Years, and The Rule of Benedict. She
has served as Benedictine Prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie and Benedictine
Federation President, the President of the Leadership Council of Women Religious, and
co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women. And I urge everyone to check out her
(02:39):
website joneschidister.org. So welcome this morning, Sister Joan. I'm so happy you're
here.
Oh, you are the little brother of my life, John. I've always hoped with the hope that
(03:00):
they would give the two of us the time just to share the ideas that we've picked up, both
of us crossing the country and deepening the Catholic heart.
Oh, we get to do it now.
And you have done that, John. You know more people in the church than the church knows.
(03:21):
And as long as they know you, they're going to be happy and be loved.
Thank you.
So thank you for allowing me to be part of this.
It's a blessing.
With you.
It is a blessing. It is. It's going to be a blessing.
Let's dive right in. We're in 2025, Joan. And after all we've been through with the
church, the country, and the world throughout our lives in so many ways, people would think
(03:47):
that the world is worse than ever with permanent warfare, the threat of nuclear war, catastrophic
climate change, poverty beyond comprehension, but corporate greed worse than ever, and now
growing fascism and racism. And Jesus lived in a similar world of empire and war and injustice.
(04:10):
And He stood up and spoke out and empowered oppressed people and built a grassroots movement.
And Matthew's gospel puts all his teachings together on love, compassion, and peace and
nonviolence into one big, I call it his campaign platform speech, the Sermon on the Mount,
which begins with the Beatitudes. And I thought it would be really fun and great and helpful
(04:35):
to spend our precious time together, maybe over a couple of episodes talking about Jesus
and the Beatitudes, to help realign ourselves and our listeners for the times we're in,
to renew our discipleship to Jesus, and to be empowered like His friends to live out
these teachings. So I'll let you begin, Joan, by telling me any thoughts you have today
(05:00):
about Jesus and the context in which He was offering His Sermon on the Mount.
I don't believe, John, that we can deal with this topic without seeing it from that point
of view. So I'm going to start talking to our friends about what this isn't, because
(05:23):
I believe it's been too much understood and therefore too much ignored. We call it the
eight Beatitudes of life. Frankly, it's a better, it would be much more quickly understood
if we called it what it is, the eight attitudes toward life that you and I, if we develop
(05:53):
them, can bring our own happiness from them. In other words, this is the way Jesus told
them that they could be happy as they went through this new revelation of His to them.
(06:16):
They would be happy in all of this with its stress and its deterrence and its terrible,
bad politics as bad as we do. And we understand now that the things are so entangled that
(06:36):
each of us are touched by them. You can say, I don't do politics. Yes, you do. All you
do is you don't do it, which is doing it. So I want to look together again, something
that's meant a great deal to me personally, and that I believe should be the foundation,
(06:58):
the first step to the memory within us of the presence of God. So there's a second caveat
here too. I want you to know, I can hardly believe this. I got up this morning and I
said to myself, I have always wanted to be able to do the Beatitudes when something was
(07:27):
enveloping us in a newly deterred past. And I suddenly realized that we are sitting, weeping
over California and all of our friends and everything that's gone. And yet it is in that
(07:51):
very image in our mind, not the image of ice cream and steak, the image of what happens
when everything around you collapses. How do you manage to see any time left? So let's
(08:11):
look a bit. We have the general subject of trying to fulfill our lives. We use the word
fulfillment through life from our youngest child to our oldest family. But that's not
(08:33):
what we need. Fulfillment is not the end to our lives. What we need is enduring personal
happiness. And it is in these eight attitudes, in these eight Beatitudes that Jesus tells
(08:54):
the disciples, listen to these, live like this, and you will always be happy. And if
the people who are listening right now, if some of them, wherever they are, are feeling
a little less happy than they want to be, that they feel they must be, I want to guarantee
(09:17):
to you that more of your happiness will be what we do, you and I, with the eight attitudes
toward life given to us, not by any good psychologist, but by Jesus and the disciples who were in
(09:37):
the midst of at least as much social debacle as we are right now. So what do we have to
know? The first thing is that Beatitudes are not prayers. Nobody says the Beatitudes. You
don't tuck the child in and say, now, don't forget to say the Beatitudes tonight. Beatitudes
(09:59):
are not prayers of supplication. Dear Jesus, please make the sun come out tomorrow so the
picnic isn't ruined by the rain. The Beatitudes are not prayers of supplication. They are
not even gifts that we ask for from God. What are they? They are the realities of our lives.
(10:25):
They are the reality of your life. They are the reality of everything we wish we could
get out of right now. So Jesus, remember, is now about to begin the very serious development
(10:46):
of the disciples. And Jesus tells his disciples about the real world. He's just come back
from the desert. He's been pursued by the devil himself. When he gets out of the desert
and finally believes at the retreat, he understood everything now. He knows who he is now, who
(11:11):
his God is waiting to see his face in him. When he comes back from the desert and all
of that, he sees then that John has been arrested. John's been taken off the streets. And what
does Jesus do? He runs away. He goes to Galilee. He's not stupid. He knows if he goes to Nazareth,
(11:38):
that's a big city, he'll be seen very soon. They'll pick him up quickly. But what he does
is he goes around the Great Lake and the 10 or 12 little pods of people there. And he
stays in that area for a good long time, trying to support those people, trying to give them
(11:59):
another view of the world as these beatitudes give us. Even he knows when he leaves the
outer side of Nazareth that everybody is stressed. The farmers are stressed. The people are afraid.
(12:24):
The taxes are destroyed. And Jesus says, pay attention, pay attention to what's going on.
Those are the very segments you have to live well if you yourself are about to become holy.
So we call them blessed. They are not the blessed beatitudes. They're the blessed beatitudes.
(12:53):
Blessed means you're lucky. You're getting it. You're growing. Blessed means the holy,
the divine. So when we are talking about the beatitudes, we're talking about the very things
that Jesus says, if we live them, we will live a happy life. The first then of the beatitudes
(13:20):
now we can get into them. We know where they're coming from, what they're here for, that they
are not a retreat, they are not a set of rosaries. They are for you to listen to your life.
Okay, great.
We're not going to talk to you about any other.
(13:41):
Thank you. Before I thought I'd read them, and before I do, I want to ask you one more
question about this context. And I'm not sure you'll agree, but this is what I've learned
on my journey. Forty years ago, I lived in the war zone of El Salvador, and Ayah Korea,
(14:02):
who was assassinated, the Jesuit president of the university, I met him the day I arrived,
and he said to me, John, what we're dealing with here is the anti-reign, and meaning the
anti-kingdom of God. It was shocking. I never recovered from that, because literally bombs
were falling. And then a couple of years later, one night, my friend and teacher, Daniel Berrigan,
(14:27):
said, John, what we're dealing with in the world is the anti-gospel. The empire, the
culture is…
Yeah.
And then that led me, I wrote a book on the beatitudes called The Beatitudes of Peace,
and I began by saying, and this is what I'm just asking your opinion on, that what we
(14:47):
hear every day, what I've heard my whole life from the government, the Pentagon, the
war makers, Wall Street, every nation in the world is the anti-Sermon on the Mount. Not
love your enemies, but kill your enemies. And not the beatitudes, but the anti-beatitudes.
And let me tell you the anti-beatitudes, and tell me what you think. This is what the world
(15:10):
says. Blessed are the rich. Blessed are you if you never mourn. Blessed are the violent.
Blessed are you if you hunger and thirst for injustice. Blessed are you if you show no
mercy. Blessed are the impure of heart. You know, as long as you look good, who cares
what's going on inside? Blessed are the war makers. And blessed are you if you're never
(15:34):
persecuted, you're never in trouble because you spoke out for justice or stood up with
the nonviolent Jesus. What do you think of that take on it, the world?
Well, that's absolutely. I mean, this is the only thing we have to somehow or other draw
the beatitudes against. Where else would you go? Everything looks good. So that's a beatitude,
(16:01):
right? And everything that I want is good, and that's my beatitude, right? No. The beatitude
is when you realize that what you are facing outside yourself has not been fully prepared
even in you. And so you have to you have got to consider, I like that, the anti-beatitude.
(16:26):
Fine. Turn it. What will be there then when we turn it? Because that's what I'm going
to do now. I'm going to turn every single one of these.
You know, so as I read them now, I'm thinking to myself and your word turn it. St. Francis,
(16:46):
you remember the quote of St. Francis of Assisi, he said, well, the only way to follow Jesus
is, you know, and to live out the gospel because Jesus turns everything upside down is you
have to stand on your head for the rest of your life. Isn't that wonderful? And that's
what I hear. I mean, the first sentence in the Sermon on the Mount. So I'll read them.
(17:09):
And you know, maybe you could share on the first one for now, first or second ones. So
here we go. Matthew chapter 5 verse 1, I'll read them all.
When he saw the crowds, Jesus went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples
came to him, and he began to teach them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
(17:31):
is the reign of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed
are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for
justice, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
(17:53):
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for
they will be called sons and daughters of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for
the sake of justice. Theirs is the reign of heaven. And blessed are you when they insult
you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.
(18:18):
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the
prophets before you. Powerful.
Always. Always.
So, go ahead, then. The blessed are the poor in spirit, the reign of God is theirs.
(18:40):
All right. Let's look at this, not so much from the front, but from the back. If we look
at the first attitude, that's exactly blessed are the poor in spirit, the ones that are
not lusting for more power, more things, more status. Why? Because when you have to have
(19:09):
all that, it's like a sandpaper of the soul. You'll never get enough. You will always be
irritated by what you don't have. But if you don't have that lust, if you compress that
lust, then you get out of your life the happiness that is within you to give. We have to understand
(19:35):
what others do not have but need and what we have but do not need. We need to see, then,
that wanting more, getting more, hoarding more, trying more, it's not where the full
road to happiness really is. So we have to ask ourselves a question. Do we ever stop
(20:01):
and think of those things? Because today I'm going to give you a test and I'm going to
ask the people who are listening, close your eyes. I'll ask your question one at a time
and I want you to stay with your eyes closed and honestly ask it. This is called the Heilbroner
test. He was an economist and an historian of great stature in the states itself. Heilbroners
(20:30):
question goes like this. What would it take for the average American to live the lifestyle
of the poor of the world? So let's see, you and I. We'll take a walk through your house.
Go to your house, close your eyes, go to your house, see your house. Now, first, then, I
(20:54):
want you to go through the rooms and of your home, take everything in it out of it, everything.
Leave it. You now have five empty rooms if you're doing this right. Two, leave a few
blankets around if you want, maybe an old table, a wooden chair. There could even be
(21:17):
some bureaus that couldn't be moved and they held the clothes. Look in those, get rid of
those too. You're allowed to keep one article from each, but shoes can be had by the house
leader only. That's first, go to your home, take everything in it out of it. Don't cheat.
(21:41):
You have an empty house now. Now take all the appliances out of the kitchen, the toaster,
get rid of it, the fry pan you won't need, the stove, pull out the lines, the coffee
maker, the fresh eggs, the dried beans, a few potatoes, take after them the meat, the
(22:07):
canned goods, the crackers, the candy. There's nothing on every shelf now, on any shelf now,
any drawer, on the floor. It's all been gone. Now go down the hall a bit, shut off the water
(22:27):
in the bathroom. Now remember what you have behind you, all the empty rooms, all the material
gone, shut off the water in the bathroom. Now go across the hall or down to the basement
and turn off the electricity too. Just drag the lines, snap them, you won't need them.
(22:51):
And now take away the house. There's a mover outside. They've put all the boxes in the
back already and now they have the ramp up to the back end for the house. What you have
left you will have to eliminate, your phone, the newspapers, oh yeah, the fire department,
(23:17):
the hospitals that you might need, the paved roads that make it easier at least even to
walk and the children's schools. And at that point we want all of you to tell us if this
is you, how will you work harder and improve your life? Because that's what we say to every
(23:47):
other immigrant who comes across the river carrying nothing or soaking it unusable. Yeah,
but how are you going to work harder and improve your life up here? Those are the graces of
(24:10):
the Florida fires right now. They're asking us, the average American, what will you do
now? You see, we have an internal question that the Beatitudes leave with us and that
(24:32):
question is, what is my theology of life? What am I living for? What am I giving away?
What am I building up for others? What am I teaching them? What am I helping them through?
(24:57):
Because this leads us immediately then to the second Beatitude, blessed are those that
mourn. That does not mean mourn the casket. It means mourn for the plight of those who
are living those inhuman lives to which we just compared our own. They can't make it
(25:26):
if we don't help them make it or they will never be able to raise the quality of life
for us all. We must be sure here that we do not allow our own lives to be wasted away
in that terrible collection of the unnecessary, if we can continue to neglect to be concerned
(25:57):
about the effect of our own actions on the lives of others. Bad enough when it's the
government action. What about my life on my theology of life to the people who live next
door to me, to the people I moved away from because they did live next door to me? Or
(26:21):
like the wages we gave them for doing manual labor or service, would you have paid your
neighbor next door that money? And you see, if they don't get just money, they can't
paint their houses or care for their children or plant flowers in their own backyard. And
(26:48):
then when we do that, we want them to move, which of course makes us unhappy to have to
explain that to somebody, isn't it? If we even have the decency to be unhappy to try
to explain that on our first babysitter. That takes us, of course, to the third attitude.
(27:15):
Well, let's stop there for a second, okay? How about that? And can I just ask a question
about the first two? Would that be all right?
Sure, sure.
So, this is all so powerful. So, thinking about this, and I hear you, these are the
phrases that I've been taught over my life about these first two beatitudes that, well,
(27:37):
the first is for us a call toward, the Jesuits called it downward mobility. And that's Jesus
and global solidarity with the poorest of the poor in the world. And that's what we're
trying to do. And Jesus does it, and by the way, in the end, on the cross, He's totally
(27:58):
poor in spirit, and into your hands I commend my spirit. And that's the journey we're all
going to make. So, that's one thing. I also remember a great friend who spent his whole
life with the poor talking about the first beatitude, and he said, you know, this, he
was saying to the homeless people and poor people that we were working with, hey, this
(28:19):
isn't just when you die. You very poor people, you already have the reign of God. We don't.
And he was kind of saying, hey, let's all try to befriend very poor and oppressed people,
and maybe they'll share with us what they already have. I loved that, and I wonder what
(28:39):
you thought about it. And in terms of mourning, so, I, in my reflections on this, I think
later in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is going to say, look, for this long haul life
of discipleship, of love, compassion, and peacemaking, avoid these things, fear, anxiety,
(29:03):
worry, even anger. It's not going to help you. But in the Beatitudes, He's going to say,
here are two emotions that you need, grief, mourning, and later He'll talk about joy at
the very end, grief and joy. And I saw that in my friends like Daniel Berrigan and Desmond Tutu.
So, then I heard a retreat 40 years ago, Dan said, his first sentence on the weekend retreat was,
(29:31):
peacemaking begins with mourning. Peacemaking begins with grief because of what our country
is doing around the world with our unjust economics, but also in warfare. And, you know,
then I, and last year I remember when I was working at Ground Zero, September 11th and all of that,
(29:53):
as the coordinator of the chaplains, everybody was grieving and mourning. And it led to
compassion like I never saw before in New York City, so much so that George W. Bush went on the
TV two weeks later, I wonder if you remember this, and said, hey, everybody, stop grieving and
mourning and go shopping and everything will be alright. Like, we're not, we don't grieve,
(30:17):
Bittman- Well, I think that they're laid out so well on the attitudes itself. I mean,
we don't mourn in this country. And Jesus saying grief is the way to compassion and love.
Any thoughts on those ideas?
when you say to people what you really need is some poverty of spirit, meaning that you are not
(30:45):
collecting everything that this globe has to offer. That is, you, that it means you must live
another way. You're not here to get everything that this place has produced. You get what you
need, you get it well. And then number two, you look at the people who can't even begin
(31:11):
to get what they need. And that means you have to help somehow. You have to be in that chain of help.
If it's charity, that's wonderful. If you are cost, I mean, if you are commonly committed to
a charity that is changing this world, then my dear friend, you really know what more mourning
(31:37):
must bring about in us. That morning is our resurrection. We get to see what we have never
bothered to look at before, which brings us, of course, and number three, which is another,
it throws the American mind right off the globe.
(31:57):
Tom- Maybe that's a good point to stop and take a break, and then we'll launch into the next episode.
So, I'm going to…
Okay, that's exactly what I did.
Good. So, I'm going to, for our listeners, I thank you so much. And this is going to conclude
the first episode. I'm hoping maybe we have three of these with our friend and teacher, Sister Joan
(32:19):
Chiddister. So, I thank you all so much for being here. Thank you, Sister Joan, for this first
installment. And you can hear more podcasts and other upcoming Zoom programs at www.beattitudecenter.org.
And so, join me next week for part two of my conversation with Sister Joan on Jesus and the
(32:43):
Beatitudes. And in the end, I say for today, may the God of peace bless everyone. Keep on
following the nonviolent Jesus, and see you next time. Thanks, Joan.
Welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. I'm John, Father John Deere, and today I'm speaking
(00:20):
with my friend, author, teacher, and lecturer, Sister Joan Chidister. This podcast is a project
of www.beattitudecenter.org, where you can find many other podcasts and regular Zoom
programs on the nonviolence of Jesus and practicing nonviolence and working for a more just, more
(00:41):
peaceful world. So I'd like to begin with a little prayer. So I invite everyone listening
to just to take a deep breath wherever you are and to relax and to center yourself again
and enter into the presence of the God of peace who loves you infinitely, personally,
and everyone everywhere. And let's welcome the nonviolent Jesus here with us and ask
(01:07):
for whatever graces and blessings we need to follow him more faithfully and do God's
will. God of peace, thank you for all the blessings of life and love and peace that
you give us. Be with us now as we reflect on the life and teachings and the beatitudes
(01:30):
of Jesus, that we might follow him more faithfully and do your will and do our part to help end
war and poverty, racism and sexism, violence, nuclear weapons and environmental destruction,
that we might welcome your reign of universal love, universal compassion, and universal
(01:51):
peace here on earth in Jesus name. Amen. It's my great pleasure to welcome today my friend
Sister Joan Chidister to reflect together on Jesus and the beatitudes. As many listeners
know, Sister Joan is an internationally known lecturer and teacher, a columnist for the
National Catholic Reporter, and the author of some 60 books, including The Time Is Now,
(02:17):
Becoming Fully Human, Radical Spirit, The Gift of Years, and The Rule of Benedict. She
has served as Benedictine Prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie and Benedictine
Federation President, the President of the Leadership Council of Women Religious, and
co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women. And I urge everyone to check out her
(02:39):
website joneschidister.org. So welcome this morning, Sister Joan. I'm so happy you're
here.
Oh, you are the little brother of my life, John. I've always hoped with the hope that
(03:00):
they would give the two of us the time just to share the ideas that we've picked up, both
of us crossing the country and deepening the Catholic heart.
Oh, we get to do it now.
And you have done that, John. You know more people in the church than the church knows.
(03:21):
And as long as they know you, they're going to be happy and be loved.
Thank you.
So thank you for allowing me to be part of this.
It's a blessing.
With you.
It is a blessing. It is. It's going to be a blessing.
Let's dive right in. We're in 2025, Joan. And after all we've been through with the
church, the country, and the world throughout our lives in so many ways, people would think
(03:47):
that the world is worse than ever with permanent warfare, the threat of nuclear war, catastrophic
climate change, poverty beyond comprehension, but corporate greed worse than ever, and now
growing fascism and racism. And Jesus lived in a similar world of empire and war and injustice.
(04:10):
And He stood up and spoke out and empowered oppressed people and built a grassroots movement.
And Matthew's gospel puts all his teachings together on love, compassion, and peace and
nonviolence into one big, I call it his campaign platform speech, the Sermon on the Mount,
which begins with the Beatitudes. And I thought it would be really fun and great and helpful
(04:35):
to spend our precious time together, maybe over a couple of episodes talking about Jesus
and the Beatitudes, to help realign ourselves and our listeners for the times we're in,
to renew our discipleship to Jesus, and to be empowered like His friends to live out
these teachings. So I'll let you begin, Joan, by telling me any thoughts you have today
(05:00):
about Jesus and the context in which He was offering His Sermon on the Mount.
I don't believe, John, that we can deal with this topic without seeing it from that point
of view. So I'm going to start talking to our friends about what this isn't, because
(05:23):
I believe it's been too much understood and therefore too much ignored. We call it the
eight Beatitudes of life. Frankly, it's a better, it would be much more quickly understood
if we called it what it is, the eight attitudes toward life that you and I, if we develop
(05:53):
them, can bring our own happiness from them. In other words, this is the way Jesus told
them that they could be happy as they went through this new revelation of His to them.
(06:16):
They would be happy in all of this with its stress and its deterrence and its terrible,
bad politics as bad as we do. And we understand now that the things are so entangled that
(06:36):
each of us are touched by them. You can say, I don't do politics. Yes, you do. All you
do is you don't do it, which is doing it. So I want to look together again, something
that's meant a great deal to me personally, and that I believe should be the foundation,
(06:58):
the first step to the memory within us of the presence of God. So there's a second caveat
here too. I want you to know, I can hardly believe this. I got up this morning and I
said to myself, I have always wanted to be able to do the Beatitudes when something was
(07:27):
enveloping us in a newly deterred past. And I suddenly realized that we are sitting, weeping
over California and all of our friends and everything that's gone. And yet it is in that
(07:51):
very image in our mind, not the image of ice cream and steak, the image of what happens
when everything around you collapses. How do you manage to see any time left? So let's
(08:11):
look a bit. We have the general subject of trying to fulfill our lives. We use the word
fulfillment through life from our youngest child to our oldest family. But that's not
(08:33):
what we need. Fulfillment is not the end to our lives. What we need is enduring personal
happiness. And it is in these eight attitudes, in these eight Beatitudes that Jesus tells
(08:54):
the disciples, listen to these, live like this, and you will always be happy. And if
the people who are listening right now, if some of them, wherever they are, are feeling
a little less happy than they want to be, that they feel they must be, I want to guarantee
(09:17):
to you that more of your happiness will be what we do, you and I, with the eight attitudes
toward life given to us, not by any good psychologist, but by Jesus and the disciples who were in
(09:37):
the midst of at least as much social debacle as we are right now. So what do we have to
know? The first thing is that Beatitudes are not prayers. Nobody says the Beatitudes. You
don't tuck the child in and say, now, don't forget to say the Beatitudes tonight. Beatitudes
(09:59):
are not prayers of supplication. Dear Jesus, please make the sun come out tomorrow so the
picnic isn't ruined by the rain. The Beatitudes are not prayers of supplication. They are
not even gifts that we ask for from God. What are they? They are the realities of our lives.
(10:25):
They are the reality of your life. They are the reality of everything we wish we could
get out of right now. So Jesus, remember, is now about to begin the very serious development
(10:46):
of the disciples. And Jesus tells his disciples about the real world. He's just come back
from the desert. He's been pursued by the devil himself. When he gets out of the desert
and finally believes at the retreat, he understood everything now. He knows who he is now, who
(11:11):
his God is waiting to see his face in him. When he comes back from the desert and all
of that, he sees then that John has been arrested. John's been taken off the streets. And what
does Jesus do? He runs away. He goes to Galilee. He's not stupid. He knows if he goes to Nazareth,
(11:38):
that's a big city, he'll be seen very soon. They'll pick him up quickly. But what he does
is he goes around the Great Lake and the 10 or 12 little pods of people there. And he
stays in that area for a good long time, trying to support those people, trying to give them
(11:59):
another view of the world as these beatitudes give us. Even he knows when he leaves the
outer side of Nazareth that everybody is stressed. The farmers are stressed. The people are afraid.
(12:24):
The taxes are destroyed. And Jesus says, pay attention, pay attention to what's going on.
Those are the very segments you have to live well if you yourself are about to become holy.
So we call them blessed. They are not the blessed beatitudes. They're the blessed beatitudes.
(12:53):
Blessed means you're lucky. You're getting it. You're growing. Blessed means the holy,
the divine. So when we are talking about the beatitudes, we're talking about the very things
that Jesus says, if we live them, we will live a happy life. The first then of the beatitudes
(13:20):
now we can get into them. We know where they're coming from, what they're here for, that they
are not a retreat, they are not a set of rosaries. They are for you to listen to your life.
Okay, great.
We're not going to talk to you about any other.
(13:41):
Thank you. Before I thought I'd read them, and before I do, I want to ask you one more
question about this context. And I'm not sure you'll agree, but this is what I've learned
on my journey. Forty years ago, I lived in the war zone of El Salvador, and Ayah Korea,
(14:02):
who was assassinated, the Jesuit president of the university, I met him the day I arrived,
and he said to me, John, what we're dealing with here is the anti-reign, and meaning the
anti-kingdom of God. It was shocking. I never recovered from that, because literally bombs
were falling. And then a couple of years later, one night, my friend and teacher, Daniel Berrigan,
(14:27):
said, John, what we're dealing with in the world is the anti-gospel. The empire, the
culture is…
Yeah.
And then that led me, I wrote a book on the beatitudes called The Beatitudes of Peace,
and I began by saying, and this is what I'm just asking your opinion on, that what we
(14:47):
hear every day, what I've heard my whole life from the government, the Pentagon, the
war makers, Wall Street, every nation in the world is the anti-Sermon on the Mount. Not
love your enemies, but kill your enemies. And not the beatitudes, but the anti-beatitudes.
And let me tell you the anti-beatitudes, and tell me what you think. This is what the world
(15:10):
says. Blessed are the rich. Blessed are you if you never mourn. Blessed are the violent.
Blessed are you if you hunger and thirst for injustice. Blessed are you if you show no
mercy. Blessed are the impure of heart. You know, as long as you look good, who cares
what's going on inside? Blessed are the war makers. And blessed are you if you're never
(15:34):
persecuted, you're never in trouble because you spoke out for justice or stood up with
the nonviolent Jesus. What do you think of that take on it, the world?
Well, that's absolutely. I mean, this is the only thing we have to somehow or other draw
the beatitudes against. Where else would you go? Everything looks good. So that's a beatitude,
(16:01):
right? And everything that I want is good, and that's my beatitude, right? No. The beatitude
is when you realize that what you are facing outside yourself has not been fully prepared
even in you. And so you have to you have got to consider, I like that, the anti-beatitude.
(16:26):
Fine. Turn it. What will be there then when we turn it? Because that's what I'm going
to do now. I'm going to turn every single one of these.
You know, so as I read them now, I'm thinking to myself and your word turn it. St. Francis,
(16:46):
you remember the quote of St. Francis of Assisi, he said, well, the only way to follow Jesus
is, you know, and to live out the gospel because Jesus turns everything upside down is you
have to stand on your head for the rest of your life. Isn't that wonderful? And that's
what I hear. I mean, the first sentence in the Sermon on the Mount. So I'll read them.
(17:09):
And you know, maybe you could share on the first one for now, first or second ones. So
here we go. Matthew chapter 5 verse 1, I'll read them all.
When he saw the crowds, Jesus went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples
came to him, and he began to teach them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
(17:31):
is the reign of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed
are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for
justice, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
(17:53):
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for
they will be called sons and daughters of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for
the sake of justice. Theirs is the reign of heaven. And blessed are you when they insult
you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.
(18:18):
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the
prophets before you. Powerful.
Always. Always.
So, go ahead, then. The blessed are the poor in spirit, the reign of God is theirs.
(18:40):
All right. Let's look at this, not so much from the front, but from the back. If we look
at the first attitude, that's exactly blessed are the poor in spirit, the ones that are
not lusting for more power, more things, more status. Why? Because when you have to have
(19:09):
all that, it's like a sandpaper of the soul. You'll never get enough. You will always be
irritated by what you don't have. But if you don't have that lust, if you compress that
lust, then you get out of your life the happiness that is within you to give. We have to understand
(19:35):
what others do not have but need and what we have but do not need. We need to see, then,
that wanting more, getting more, hoarding more, trying more, it's not where the full
road to happiness really is. So we have to ask ourselves a question. Do we ever stop
(20:01):
and think of those things? Because today I'm going to give you a test and I'm going to
ask the people who are listening, close your eyes. I'll ask your question one at a time
and I want you to stay with your eyes closed and honestly ask it. This is called the Heilbroner
test. He was an economist and an historian of great stature in the states itself. Heilbroners
(20:30):
question goes like this. What would it take for the average American to live the lifestyle
of the poor of the world? So let's see, you and I. We'll take a walk through your house.
Go to your house, close your eyes, go to your house, see your house. Now, first, then, I
(20:54):
want you to go through the rooms and of your home, take everything in it out of it, everything.
Leave it. You now have five empty rooms if you're doing this right. Two, leave a few
blankets around if you want, maybe an old table, a wooden chair. There could even be
(21:17):
some bureaus that couldn't be moved and they held the clothes. Look in those, get rid of
those too. You're allowed to keep one article from each, but shoes can be had by the house
leader only. That's first, go to your home, take everything in it out of it. Don't cheat.
(21:41):
You have an empty house now. Now take all the appliances out of the kitchen, the toaster,
get rid of it, the fry pan you won't need, the stove, pull out the lines, the coffee
maker, the fresh eggs, the dried beans, a few potatoes, take after them the meat, the
(22:07):
canned goods, the crackers, the candy. There's nothing on every shelf now, on any shelf now,
any drawer, on the floor. It's all been gone. Now go down the hall a bit, shut off the water
(22:27):
in the bathroom. Now remember what you have behind you, all the empty rooms, all the material
gone, shut off the water in the bathroom. Now go across the hall or down to the basement
and turn off the electricity too. Just drag the lines, snap them, you won't need them.
(22:51):
And now take away the house. There's a mover outside. They've put all the boxes in the
back already and now they have the ramp up to the back end for the house. What you have
left you will have to eliminate, your phone, the newspapers, oh yeah, the fire department,
(23:17):
the hospitals that you might need, the paved roads that make it easier at least even to
walk and the children's schools. And at that point we want all of you to tell us if this
is you, how will you work harder and improve your life? Because that's what we say to every
(23:47):
other immigrant who comes across the river carrying nothing or soaking it unusable. Yeah,
but how are you going to work harder and improve your life up here? Those are the graces of
(24:10):
the Florida fires right now. They're asking us, the average American, what will you do
now? You see, we have an internal question that the Beatitudes leave with us and that
(24:32):
question is, what is my theology of life? What am I living for? What am I giving away?
What am I building up for others? What am I teaching them? What am I helping them through?
(24:57):
Because this leads us immediately then to the second Beatitude, blessed are those that
mourn. That does not mean mourn the casket. It means mourn for the plight of those who
are living those inhuman lives to which we just compared our own. They can't make it
(25:26):
if we don't help them make it or they will never be able to raise the quality of life
for us all. We must be sure here that we do not allow our own lives to be wasted away
in that terrible collection of the unnecessary, if we can continue to neglect to be concerned
(25:57):
about the effect of our own actions on the lives of others. Bad enough when it's the
government action. What about my life on my theology of life to the people who live next
door to me, to the people I moved away from because they did live next door to me? Or
(26:21):
like the wages we gave them for doing manual labor or service, would you have paid your
neighbor next door that money? And you see, if they don't get just money, they can't
paint their houses or care for their children or plant flowers in their own backyard. And
(26:48):
then when we do that, we want them to move, which of course makes us unhappy to have to
explain that to somebody, isn't it? If we even have the decency to be unhappy to try
to explain that on our first babysitter. That takes us, of course, to the third attitude.
(27:15):
Well, let's stop there for a second, okay? How about that? And can I just ask a question
about the first two? Would that be all right?
Sure, sure.
So, this is all so powerful. So, thinking about this, and I hear you, these are the
phrases that I've been taught over my life about these first two beatitudes that, well,
(27:37):
the first is for us a call toward, the Jesuits called it downward mobility. And that's Jesus
and global solidarity with the poorest of the poor in the world. And that's what we're
trying to do. And Jesus does it, and by the way, in the end, on the cross, He's totally
(27:58):
poor in spirit, and into your hands I commend my spirit. And that's the journey we're all
going to make. So, that's one thing. I also remember a great friend who spent his whole
life with the poor talking about the first beatitude, and he said, you know, this, he
was saying to the homeless people and poor people that we were working with, hey, this
(28:19):
isn't just when you die. You very poor people, you already have the reign of God. We don't.
And he was kind of saying, hey, let's all try to befriend very poor and oppressed people,
and maybe they'll share with us what they already have. I loved that, and I wonder what
(28:39):
you thought about it. And in terms of mourning, so, I, in my reflections on this, I think
later in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is going to say, look, for this long haul life
of discipleship, of love, compassion, and peacemaking, avoid these things, fear, anxiety,
(29:03):
worry, even anger. It's not going to help you. But in the Beatitudes, He's going to say,
here are two emotions that you need, grief, mourning, and later He'll talk about joy at
the very end, grief and joy. And I saw that in my friends like Daniel Berrigan and Desmond Tutu.
So, then I heard a retreat 40 years ago, Dan said, his first sentence on the weekend retreat was,
(29:31):
peacemaking begins with mourning. Peacemaking begins with grief because of what our country
is doing around the world with our unjust economics, but also in warfare. And, you know,
then I, and last year I remember when I was working at Ground Zero, September 11th and all of that,
(29:53):
as the coordinator of the chaplains, everybody was grieving and mourning. And it led to
compassion like I never saw before in New York City, so much so that George W. Bush went on the
TV two weeks later, I wonder if you remember this, and said, hey, everybody, stop grieving and
mourning and go shopping and everything will be alright. Like, we're not, we don't grieve,
(30:17):
Bittman- Well, I think that they're laid out so well on the attitudes itself. I mean,
we don't mourn in this country. And Jesus saying grief is the way to compassion and love.
Any thoughts on those ideas?
when you say to people what you really need is some poverty of spirit, meaning that you are not
(30:45):
collecting everything that this globe has to offer. That is, you, that it means you must live
another way. You're not here to get everything that this place has produced. You get what you
need, you get it well. And then number two, you look at the people who can't even begin
(31:11):
to get what they need. And that means you have to help somehow. You have to be in that chain of help.
If it's charity, that's wonderful. If you are cost, I mean, if you are commonly committed to
a charity that is changing this world, then my dear friend, you really know what more mourning
(31:37):
must bring about in us. That morning is our resurrection. We get to see what we have never
bothered to look at before, which brings us, of course, and number three, which is another,
it throws the American mind right off the globe.
(31:57):
Tom- Maybe that's a good point to stop and take a break, and then we'll launch into the next episode.
So, I'm going to…
Okay, that's exactly what I did.
Good. So, I'm going to, for our listeners, I thank you so much. And this is going to conclude
the first episode. I'm hoping maybe we have three of these with our friend and teacher, Sister Joan
(32:19):
Chiddister. So, I thank you all so much for being here. Thank you, Sister Joan, for this first
installment. And you can hear more podcasts and other upcoming Zoom programs at www.beattitudecenter.org.
And so, join me next week for part two of my conversation with Sister Joan on Jesus and the
(32:43):
Beatitudes. And in the end, I say for today, may the God of peace bless everyone. Keep on
following the nonviolent Jesus, and see you next time. Thanks, Joan.
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