Episode #8: "It's so easy!" Fr. John Dear with Sr. Joan Chittister on “Jesus and the Beatitudes” (Part 2 of 3)
📆 Drops Monday, Feb. 24, 2025
❓What if living the Beatitudes wasn’t just about faith—but about transforming the world?
In this second powerful conversation, Fr. John Dear and the fearless Sr. Joan Chittister dive into the next three Beatitudes, showing how they call us to radical compassion, unshakable justice, and undivided hearts: "Americans have a hard time with humility, and what goes around, comes around".
💠 Blessed are the merciful – How do we practice radical forgiveness in a world filled with violence and division?
💠 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice – What does it mean to crave justice so deeply that it drives every part of our lives?
💠 Blessed are the single-hearted – How do we stay focused on love and truth when the world pulls us in every direction?
Sr. Joan doesn’t just talk about faith—she lives it. "They will see God...it is so easy! God is manifest in everything of everything!" She’s a Benedictine sister, a fierce advocate for peace, human dignity, and justice, and the author of 60+ books. In this episode, she reminds us that the Beatitudes aren’t just spiritual ideals—they’re the key to finding God, serving others, and living a life of deep joy.
Want to build a world rooted in mercy, justice, and love? This episode will inspire you to take action.
🎧Listen now.
🔥 Get fired up.
🌍 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: www.joanchittister.org
Sign up for our newsletter and join the movement for nonviolence: www.beatitudescenter.org
#Beatitudes #FaithInAction #HungerForJustice #MercyMatters #JesusTheRevolutionary #Peacemaking #SpiritualActivism
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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 Deer, and today I'm
(00:22):
continuing my conversation with my friend, author, teacher, and lecturer, Sister Joan
Chittister. This podcast is a project of www.beattitudecenter.org, where you can find
many other podcasts and regular Zoom programs on nonviolence, Jesus, and working for a more just,
(00:43):
more peaceful world. So, before we begin again, let's have a little moment of prayer,
and I invite everyone to just take a deep breath, whoever you are, and to relax, and once again,
to enter into the presence of the God of peace who loves you personally, infinitely, and everyone
(01:05):
else as well. And let's welcome Jesus here with us into our hearts, and ask for whatever graces
we need to follow Jesus more faithfully and to do God's will. God of peace, thank you
for all the blessings of life, love, and peace that you give us. Be with us now as we reflect
(01:31):
on the teachings and beatitudes of Jesus, that we might follow him more faithfully, and do your will,
and live out his beatitudes, and become beatitude people who welcome your reign of universal love,
compassion, and peace. In Jesus' name, amen. So, once again, it's a pleasure to welcome
(01:53):
my friend Sister Joan Chittister. This is part two of our ongoing conversation
on Jesus and the Beatitudes, and we left off last week talking just about to launch into the third
Beatitude, which I'll read and then invite Joan to comment on. So, we're at Matthew chapter 5,
(02:15):
verse 5, blessed are the meek, they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
for justice, they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, they will be shown mercy. Welcome
back, Joan. Thank you. Thank you, dear brother John. I happen to have a love for this myself,
(02:40):
and I'm afraid it shows because we could go on for a long time here. We did, however, I think,
do a kind of a deep dive into the first of the great attitudes that Jesus has told us to live out
if we want to be happy. And the second as well, at the base, what they say is don't hoard and think
(03:09):
that the more that you manage to pile up in your basement is going to make you happier the next day.
Don't cheat other people. They're working to bring themselves to the moment when they can feel happy
as well as rejected. And be just. Be just with these people who do not have what we have.
(03:37):
That brings us into the question, how do you mean be just? What are you talking about?
The third, the attitude is called blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
They're going to get it. They're going to get what you seem to think you had the great sense for.
(04:03):
Well, yes and no. They are asking you to be the kind of person that works with persons who need
them. Blessed are the meek, for an American is relatively ancient of synonym and we don't like it.
(04:26):
It really means in American language, be humble, meaning don't push, don't grab, don't ignore
everybody else. Don't think that the place where you are is the greatest and you will just keep
making it great. Well, the people down the street and their kids can't pay their medical bills.
(04:51):
What we need is a way, Jesus says, of living my life that does not destroy yours. If I am living
a life that is not for any reason or in any way making it impossible for you to become
(05:13):
equally relieved, is something wrong with the way we're happening. I'm not exceptional. I'm human.
You're not exceptional. You're nice. You're good. You're smart. You care, but you're human.
And therefore, we don't have any birthrights tell us getting up in the morning that all the eggs
(05:36):
that were hatched that night, the night before were ours to buy or were ours to save.
And therefore, we must treat what we take in all the other kinds of people in our lives
as equal partners, different maybe, of course different, but equal, which then prepares us now
(06:00):
for the fourth of the great attitudes. And they are…
Let me just ask you a little bit more about the third one before we… Is that okay?
Sure.
Yeah. So, I wanted you to comment on this. In my work and journey with the Beatitudes,
there's a couple of thoughts. Thomas Merton wrote in his famous essay of 1965,
(06:27):
Blessed Are the Meek, The Christian Roots of Nonviolence, that he said the Hebrew word
meekness, which runs throughout the Psalms, interestingly, yes, it means humility, but it
doesn't mean passivity. And he wrote, that's the biblical word for active nonviolence in this sense
(06:48):
of Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day. So, humble and gentle, but nothing passive about
it. So, you're standing up, as you're going to say, for justice and peace. And that was a revelation
to me. So, I'm sitting with that for years going, wow, is Merton right? Blessed are the nonviolent,
(07:08):
whereas the world would say blessed are the violent. But then, Joan, a comment on this is so
weird, the imagination of Jesus. He's connecting humility and, let's say, active nonviolence,
or the struggle for justice and peace there, with oneness with creation. You see, they will inherit
(07:31):
the earth. And I remember the day about 20 years ago, I was living in New Mexico on the mountaintop
in a hermitage, and I thought to myself, I've never heard anyone talk about the connection between the
two. Why is that? And then I realized, well, you know, 1700 years of the just war theory,
we've rejected this call to peacemaking, justice, nonviolence, and like the politics of humility and
(07:58):
gentleness. And so, we're not one with creation, and we've been destroying the earth, and that
could only lead to catastrophic climate change. So, any thoughts on, this is my take on this
powerful verse. I wrote a whole book on it, Joan, they will inherit the earth. What do you think?
Well, if you don't mind, I'm a bad Ickman, right? And I'm listening to you, and I'm saying to myself,
(08:29):
he knows exactly what the problem is here. You see, Americans have a hard time dealing with
violence. To tell an American to be humble is to be run off the rails, pal. And yet, this is the third
(08:50):
of the beatitudes, and it runs right into, guess what, number four, therefore blessed are the
merciful. No, blessed are those hungry and thirsty for justice.
Yes. What you do to others are going to happen to you too. You've already announced your
(09:12):
exceptionalism. We don't do that in my family. We always buy the top of the mountain in my family.
We take all the kids to a private pool because we don't want them on that dirty sand. That's
exceptionalness. That means I'm above. That means I will not be walking the pace of the average
(09:37):
people even around me. No matter what I have, I'm it. But then we get to, oh, you poor soul.
We feel so sorry for you. God, you do need help. That's number four. Blessed are the merciful.
To the less mentally healthy, we are merciful. To people who have fallen on drugs and loss,
(10:06):
we are merciful. To those who are not good like us, less than whole, not as human, we're going to
readjust our thinking. To be, to have mercy, to get mercy when we need mercy, we must be part of
(10:28):
the merciful community. However, hang on if you're an American. Let's ask, for instance, what are we
getting in the fourth part of the tradition? What about Guantanamo? They're still there, aren't they?
(10:50):
We know that. We haven't said a word about that for literally years now. They have sunken to nothing,
never seen their children again. It's all been about vengeance. Blessed are the merciful.
No vengeance. Blessed are the merciful, not with vengeance. In America, over half of the population
(11:16):
believes that torture is acceptable. We have that counted. We have that marked off. Our
psychologists know that. Our politicians know that. We all know that. It's all right with me. Listen,
look at what he was. We'll get it out of him. Torture is acceptable to half of the population,
(11:40):
and we say not a word of repentance. Why? Because we don't start here in humility to begin with,
let alone mercy as well. That brings us, of course, then to the other end, the end that we have,
(12:01):
we know we must now consciously be part of. And that's the fifth beatitude that reads,
the attitude that reads, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are
those who are starving to see righteousness. Blessed are those who recognize how the entire
(12:31):
culture is operating, and by God, we need to understand righteousness and how it cuts off
half of people. We need then a sense of justice, of humanity in our own. When the kids do something,
(12:55):
that my child would never do that. No, you may not keep him after school. They need justice.
They need a sense of humanity, meaning that man fell in that gutter, and another human being will
have to pick him up. And most of all, we need standards, standards. The number of people
(13:19):
who have been denied housing because they were another color than ours recognized immediately
what their problem was. They had the money in their pocket, but a real good thinker wouldn't
allow that in our building because it would destroy the building. We now understand that we must pursue
(13:47):
righteousness, justice, and humanity for these people, freedom and justice for all. And when you
and I see it happening, we have to call it. There is no other way out, and when we call it, we will
be happy to know that we have been part of the change in every product we sell, every law we pass,
(14:12):
every right and righteousness we protect. We are becoming now, we are reaching out to become a city
on a hill, a light for the peoples. And that, of course, brings us to the attitude of number six,
(14:35):
blessed are the pure of heart, the single heart.
We'll reflect a little more, and then we'll do that attitude, and then we'll wrap it up for today.
It's so powerful, you're saying, blessed are the meek, the humble, the gentle, blessed are those
(14:58):
who hunger and thirst for righteousness, justice, blessed are the merciful. So much to talk about,
Joan. Say a word about what he means, what does he mean when he says, those who show mercy
(15:19):
to those in the culture who are not shown mercy, mercy will be shown them. In other words,
I always thought that that meant kind of what goes around comes around. If you live a life of mercy
day in and day out, especially towards people who are ostracized and marginalized and not shown any
compassion, you know, not only is God going to show mercy to you, but people, others will show
(15:45):
mercy to you. How do you see that?
Well, it's a matter of, I've always thought that people of any element at all that we're looking
for in a culture must consciously become aware of the power of one of these to begin either to accept
(16:18):
it or to reject it. It's too easy simply to wipe over it. I mean, isn't it true? I mean, we never,
all the time I went to school, Catholic schools, we had the Beatitudes, but it didn't mean anything
to me or my family or even my parish or my church. We didn't demonstrate it in any way whatsoever.
(16:46):
So then what, if you are looking for the single hearted, you're looking for people who demonstrate
this, who what they, when they say, yes, I'll do it, they do it. When they say, no, I can't, they
can't. That's where you get down to the bone of the soul. Every soul has a bone. We never talk about
(17:09):
the bone of the soul because in the bone of the soul lies the energy and the propensity to do what
needs to be done. Now I can look at it. Oh, God knows I can, I can, I can stand there and stare at
it for the rest of my life, but unless it touches the bone of my soul without where I am really cure
(17:37):
of heart, single hearted, will do what has to be done in front of me, if nowhere else, then it's
never going to happen, John. It's never going to happen.
Tom So you're talking about blessed are the
pure of heart, the clean of heart, they will see God. So you're-
Ruthie The single hearted, the single hearted, those who are single heartedly committed to this
(18:08):
humility, to its gentleness, to its mourning, who is reaching out and they are demonstrating,
they're not playing a game. See what a good boy I am in their life. I mean, I sit and listen to
families on television, just the way all the rest of you do. And it is amazing how touched I am
(18:37):
when a family in sorrow is trying to explain the death of the mother or the father or the sister
or the brother and somebody says something like this, I don't care. I'll never be able to do
without her. There was nothing that ever bled on anybody that she didn't take care of.
(19:02):
Now, she was a single hearted saint. She was pure of heart. She didn't do it to get credit.
She didn't do it to get seen. She did it because it was there. And she grabbed the stuff and ran
off the porch and picked up the kid and said, I'll get you to your mother. That's the beginning of
(19:27):
sanctity. That's why it is so late in the Beatitudes, because this is where you're going.
If you begin to be conscious of those first five elements, they're there for you to practice for you.
But now we're moving into the people around us, the ones we wouldn't rent to the people who have
(19:53):
a different color. But now it's what are you going to do? Yeah, really? What are you going to do?
What are you going to do? Do you belong to any clubs? What clubs do you belong to?
Do you give to any charities? What charities do you give to? It's a molding, John. It's a shaping
(20:16):
that comes out of these Beatitudes. These are not activities. This is not a prayer of supplication.
This is pouring more and more of me into me. And if I get there at these later stages, I will be so
(20:39):
happy. So that's so beautiful, your translation,
blessed are the pure of heart, blessed are the single-hearted. And what does it mean for you
that Jesus says, they will see God? Something about single-hearted visions, living the Beatitudes,
and you will see God. I remember Dan Berrigan saying, that means the beatific vision is right
(21:05):
where you are. Everybody around you, you see God in everybody. You see Christ in the poor and everyone.
How do you unpack that? They will see God. Oh, I believe they will. I mean, I don't see,
I see seeing God very, very easy anymore, John. It's in every perfect rose, it's in every crying
(21:31):
child, it's in every old woman and her last breath. God is manifest in the breath and the
presence of everything we see. The problem is we miss the portrait. We don't know what we're seeing.
There is no other answer. That God is present, what is we are the ones who are not present to
(21:57):
the God who is with us. Any good contemplative order will tell you that every single day.
That's the Benedictine way, isn't it? To see God in everyday ordinary life, in one another,
in creation. That's what happens if you live out the Beatitudes, you begin to see God.
(22:21):
You know, the spiritual nugget in this tiny little rule of Benedict from the year 300
is humility. It took them centuries to recognize that it is chapter seven on humility in the rule
of Benedict that is our spirituality. You have to be there. You have to know humility between you
(22:51):
and the world, the Christian world, God's world. Inside yourself, you know who you are and you're
working on it already. Then you must understand everything that goes around you and give it your
best look. And then in the last four of those elements, you don't hurt anybody. Anybody.
(23:19):
And you don't even laugh at them. You don't reject them. They're just yours now.
So these two pieces, they fall in line. But especially, it's these,
(23:42):
the whole notion of the Beatitudes is to find out what happiness is, not blessedness is.
That's nothing but an invoking a prayer on the guy next to you. This is the real thing.
Okay.
And it is who you become when you inherit these eight Beatitudes, when you become a
(24:11):
person. When you breathe them out and breathe them in. You got it.
I am hearing you reflect on the journey of the Beatitudes, the poor in spirit, mourning and
meek and humble and gentle and hungry and thirst for justice and being merciful and single-hearted.
(24:32):
Another way I've been looking at all of this lately is as in the end, total surrender to God,
you know, the poor in spirit, you're surrendering to God to be mournful. Wow, you need God and
humble. That's the whole thing. Not my will, your will be done. Hungering and thirst God for justice
and mercy and single-heartedly, and I'm seeing God. That's all I want is to see God. It's taken
(24:58):
me my whole life, Joan, to understand it's a journey of totally surrendering to God. And that's
where it's right there in the Beatitudes. What do you think? Yeah, that is all over the place. Yes,
it is. And how to get there, that's what I love about that. Man, go out and find a charity. Go
see somebody who is hurting and they've been left out of the dinner. Go take care of that,
(25:26):
and you'll feel really good tonight. You're going to have a good night's sleep.
I just wanted to… Well, we have just a few minutes left, so I want to sort of end on back
to hunger and thirsting for justice. And the flip side of that is, well, in my translation,
they will be satisfied. And I all… That's okay. You do it. I want you to do it. Well,
(25:49):
I was thinking of… You draw it together.
Well, my whole life I was wondering, okay, what does that mean? Well, then I thought as a kid,
well, we want the victories of justice. We want apartheid to end. We want the Vietnam War to end.
We want the war in El Salvador, Nicaragua, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or the killing in Gaza,
(26:10):
or Ukraine, or Africa to end. We want poverty to end in hunger. And well, okay, I may not get those.
I'm getting used to the idea. I'm not going to live to see the victory of justice. But then I
thought, if you're still with me on this, I remembered the great book that I read at Duke
in college, Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Gosh, remember? And he said the lesson
(26:37):
of being in Auschwitz was those who survived found meaning in life. And I thought that's what Jesus
is getting at. In other words, if you hunger and thirst for justice, you'll be satisfied. You will
find the ultimate meaning in life. You're no longer about I, me, mine. You are about justice for all
(26:58):
the poor of the world. And that's a journey of both mercy and humility and single-mindedness.
But I thought, well, if that's true, that that works for me, because I always wanted meaning in
my life, Joan. And I think Jesus is saying that. And maybe the victories of justice too, but
(27:19):
definitely this deep, deep, holy, almost contentment that the best thing we can do with our lives
in a world of total injustice is to work for justice and mercy. What do you think? Tell us
about that.
I will next week.
Oh, we're going to end there.
You told me this was the end.
(27:40):
Okay. So we'll pick up there, and then we'll move into the great teachings about peacemaking.
Yes.
So thank you so much, Sister Joan, for speaking with me today. And thank you, friends, for
listening to the Nonviolent Jesus podcast. And you can hear more podcasts and find other
(28:01):
Zoom programs at www.beattitudecenter.org. This has been part two of my conversation with Sister
Joan. Join me next week when we have the final part three of my conversation with Sister Joan
Chidister on Jesus and the Beatitudes. And so, may the God of peace bless all of you.
(28:22):
Keep on following the Nonviolent Jesus and living out the Beatitudes. And see you next time.
Welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. I'm John, Father John Deer, and today I'm
(00:22):
continuing my conversation with my friend, author, teacher, and lecturer, Sister Joan
Chittister. This podcast is a project of www.beattitudecenter.org, where you can find
many other podcasts and regular Zoom programs on nonviolence, Jesus, and working for a more just,
(00:43):
more peaceful world. So, before we begin again, let's have a little moment of prayer,
and I invite everyone to just take a deep breath, whoever you are, and to relax, and once again,
to enter into the presence of the God of peace who loves you personally, infinitely, and everyone
(01:05):
else as well. And let's welcome Jesus here with us into our hearts, and ask for whatever graces
we need to follow Jesus more faithfully and to do God's will. God of peace, thank you
for all the blessings of life, love, and peace that you give us. Be with us now as we reflect
(01:31):
on the teachings and beatitudes of Jesus, that we might follow him more faithfully, and do your will,
and live out his beatitudes, and become beatitude people who welcome your reign of universal love,
compassion, and peace. In Jesus' name, amen. So, once again, it's a pleasure to welcome
(01:53):
my friend Sister Joan Chittister. This is part two of our ongoing conversation
on Jesus and the Beatitudes, and we left off last week talking just about to launch into the third
Beatitude, which I'll read and then invite Joan to comment on. So, we're at Matthew chapter 5,
(02:15):
verse 5, blessed are the meek, they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
for justice, they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, they will be shown mercy. Welcome
back, Joan. Thank you. Thank you, dear brother John. I happen to have a love for this myself,
(02:40):
and I'm afraid it shows because we could go on for a long time here. We did, however, I think,
do a kind of a deep dive into the first of the great attitudes that Jesus has told us to live out
if we want to be happy. And the second as well, at the base, what they say is don't hoard and think
(03:09):
that the more that you manage to pile up in your basement is going to make you happier the next day.
Don't cheat other people. They're working to bring themselves to the moment when they can feel happy
as well as rejected. And be just. Be just with these people who do not have what we have.
(03:37):
That brings us into the question, how do you mean be just? What are you talking about?
The third, the attitude is called blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
They're going to get it. They're going to get what you seem to think you had the great sense for.
(04:03):
Well, yes and no. They are asking you to be the kind of person that works with persons who need
them. Blessed are the meek, for an American is relatively ancient of synonym and we don't like it.
(04:26):
It really means in American language, be humble, meaning don't push, don't grab, don't ignore
everybody else. Don't think that the place where you are is the greatest and you will just keep
making it great. Well, the people down the street and their kids can't pay their medical bills.
(04:51):
What we need is a way, Jesus says, of living my life that does not destroy yours. If I am living
a life that is not for any reason or in any way making it impossible for you to become
(05:13):
equally relieved, is something wrong with the way we're happening. I'm not exceptional. I'm human.
You're not exceptional. You're nice. You're good. You're smart. You care, but you're human.
And therefore, we don't have any birthrights tell us getting up in the morning that all the eggs
(05:36):
that were hatched that night, the night before were ours to buy or were ours to save.
And therefore, we must treat what we take in all the other kinds of people in our lives
as equal partners, different maybe, of course different, but equal, which then prepares us now
(06:00):
for the fourth of the great attitudes. And they are…
Let me just ask you a little bit more about the third one before we… Is that okay?
Sure.
Yeah. So, I wanted you to comment on this. In my work and journey with the Beatitudes,
there's a couple of thoughts. Thomas Merton wrote in his famous essay of 1965,
(06:27):
Blessed Are the Meek, The Christian Roots of Nonviolence, that he said the Hebrew word
meekness, which runs throughout the Psalms, interestingly, yes, it means humility, but it
doesn't mean passivity. And he wrote, that's the biblical word for active nonviolence in this sense
(06:48):
of Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day. So, humble and gentle, but nothing passive about
it. So, you're standing up, as you're going to say, for justice and peace. And that was a revelation
to me. So, I'm sitting with that for years going, wow, is Merton right? Blessed are the nonviolent,
(07:08):
whereas the world would say blessed are the violent. But then, Joan, a comment on this is so
weird, the imagination of Jesus. He's connecting humility and, let's say, active nonviolence,
or the struggle for justice and peace there, with oneness with creation. You see, they will inherit
(07:31):
the earth. And I remember the day about 20 years ago, I was living in New Mexico on the mountaintop
in a hermitage, and I thought to myself, I've never heard anyone talk about the connection between the
two. Why is that? And then I realized, well, you know, 1700 years of the just war theory,
we've rejected this call to peacemaking, justice, nonviolence, and like the politics of humility and
(07:58):
gentleness. And so, we're not one with creation, and we've been destroying the earth, and that
could only lead to catastrophic climate change. So, any thoughts on, this is my take on this
powerful verse. I wrote a whole book on it, Joan, they will inherit the earth. What do you think?
Well, if you don't mind, I'm a bad Ickman, right? And I'm listening to you, and I'm saying to myself,
(08:29):
he knows exactly what the problem is here. You see, Americans have a hard time dealing with
violence. To tell an American to be humble is to be run off the rails, pal. And yet, this is the third
(08:50):
of the beatitudes, and it runs right into, guess what, number four, therefore blessed are the
merciful. No, blessed are those hungry and thirsty for justice.
Yes. What you do to others are going to happen to you too. You've already announced your
(09:12):
exceptionalism. We don't do that in my family. We always buy the top of the mountain in my family.
We take all the kids to a private pool because we don't want them on that dirty sand. That's
exceptionalness. That means I'm above. That means I will not be walking the pace of the average
(09:37):
people even around me. No matter what I have, I'm it. But then we get to, oh, you poor soul.
We feel so sorry for you. God, you do need help. That's number four. Blessed are the merciful.
To the less mentally healthy, we are merciful. To people who have fallen on drugs and loss,
(10:06):
we are merciful. To those who are not good like us, less than whole, not as human, we're going to
readjust our thinking. To be, to have mercy, to get mercy when we need mercy, we must be part of
(10:28):
the merciful community. However, hang on if you're an American. Let's ask, for instance, what are we
getting in the fourth part of the tradition? What about Guantanamo? They're still there, aren't they?
(10:50):
We know that. We haven't said a word about that for literally years now. They have sunken to nothing,
never seen their children again. It's all been about vengeance. Blessed are the merciful.
No vengeance. Blessed are the merciful, not with vengeance. In America, over half of the population
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believes that torture is acceptable. We have that counted. We have that marked off. Our
psychologists know that. Our politicians know that. We all know that. It's all right with me. Listen,
look at what he was. We'll get it out of him. Torture is acceptable to half of the population,
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and we say not a word of repentance. Why? Because we don't start here in humility to begin with,
let alone mercy as well. That brings us, of course, then to the other end, the end that we have,
(12:01):
we know we must now consciously be part of. And that's the fifth beatitude that reads,
the attitude that reads, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are
those who are starving to see righteousness. Blessed are those who recognize how the entire
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culture is operating, and by God, we need to understand righteousness and how it cuts off
half of people. We need then a sense of justice, of humanity in our own. When the kids do something,
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that my child would never do that. No, you may not keep him after school. They need justice.
They need a sense of humanity, meaning that man fell in that gutter, and another human being will
have to pick him up. And most of all, we need standards, standards. The number of people
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who have been denied housing because they were another color than ours recognized immediately
what their problem was. They had the money in their pocket, but a real good thinker wouldn't
allow that in our building because it would destroy the building. We now understand that we must pursue
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righteousness, justice, and humanity for these people, freedom and justice for all. And when you
and I see it happening, we have to call it. There is no other way out, and when we call it, we will
be happy to know that we have been part of the change in every product we sell, every law we pass,
(14:12):
every right and righteousness we protect. We are becoming now, we are reaching out to become a city
on a hill, a light for the peoples. And that, of course, brings us to the attitude of number six,
(14:35):
blessed are the pure of heart, the single heart.
We'll reflect a little more, and then we'll do that attitude, and then we'll wrap it up for today.
It's so powerful, you're saying, blessed are the meek, the humble, the gentle, blessed are those
(14:58):
who hunger and thirst for righteousness, justice, blessed are the merciful. So much to talk about,
Joan. Say a word about what he means, what does he mean when he says, those who show mercy
(15:19):
to those in the culture who are not shown mercy, mercy will be shown them. In other words,
I always thought that that meant kind of what goes around comes around. If you live a life of mercy
day in and day out, especially towards people who are ostracized and marginalized and not shown any
compassion, you know, not only is God going to show mercy to you, but people, others will show
(15:45):
mercy to you. How do you see that?
Well, it's a matter of, I've always thought that people of any element at all that we're looking
for in a culture must consciously become aware of the power of one of these to begin either to accept
(16:18):
it or to reject it. It's too easy simply to wipe over it. I mean, isn't it true? I mean, we never,
all the time I went to school, Catholic schools, we had the Beatitudes, but it didn't mean anything
to me or my family or even my parish or my church. We didn't demonstrate it in any way whatsoever.
(16:46):
So then what, if you are looking for the single hearted, you're looking for people who demonstrate
this, who what they, when they say, yes, I'll do it, they do it. When they say, no, I can't, they
can't. That's where you get down to the bone of the soul. Every soul has a bone. We never talk about
(17:09):
the bone of the soul because in the bone of the soul lies the energy and the propensity to do what
needs to be done. Now I can look at it. Oh, God knows I can, I can, I can stand there and stare at
it for the rest of my life, but unless it touches the bone of my soul without where I am really cure
(17:37):
of heart, single hearted, will do what has to be done in front of me, if nowhere else, then it's
never going to happen, John. It's never going to happen.
Tom So you're talking about blessed are the
pure of heart, the clean of heart, they will see God. So you're-
Ruthie The single hearted, the single hearted, those who are single heartedly committed to this
(18:08):
humility, to its gentleness, to its mourning, who is reaching out and they are demonstrating,
they're not playing a game. See what a good boy I am in their life. I mean, I sit and listen to
families on television, just the way all the rest of you do. And it is amazing how touched I am
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when a family in sorrow is trying to explain the death of the mother or the father or the sister
or the brother and somebody says something like this, I don't care. I'll never be able to do
without her. There was nothing that ever bled on anybody that she didn't take care of.
(19:02):
Now, she was a single hearted saint. She was pure of heart. She didn't do it to get credit.
She didn't do it to get seen. She did it because it was there. And she grabbed the stuff and ran
off the porch and picked up the kid and said, I'll get you to your mother. That's the beginning of
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sanctity. That's why it is so late in the Beatitudes, because this is where you're going.
If you begin to be conscious of those first five elements, they're there for you to practice for you.
But now we're moving into the people around us, the ones we wouldn't rent to the people who have
(19:53):
a different color. But now it's what are you going to do? Yeah, really? What are you going to do?
What are you going to do? Do you belong to any clubs? What clubs do you belong to?
Do you give to any charities? What charities do you give to? It's a molding, John. It's a shaping
(20:16):
that comes out of these Beatitudes. These are not activities. This is not a prayer of supplication.
This is pouring more and more of me into me. And if I get there at these later stages, I will be so
(20:39):
happy. So that's so beautiful, your translation,
blessed are the pure of heart, blessed are the single-hearted. And what does it mean for you
that Jesus says, they will see God? Something about single-hearted visions, living the Beatitudes,
and you will see God. I remember Dan Berrigan saying, that means the beatific vision is right
(21:05):
where you are. Everybody around you, you see God in everybody. You see Christ in the poor and everyone.
How do you unpack that? They will see God. Oh, I believe they will. I mean, I don't see,
I see seeing God very, very easy anymore, John. It's in every perfect rose, it's in every crying
(21:31):
child, it's in every old woman and her last breath. God is manifest in the breath and the
presence of everything we see. The problem is we miss the portrait. We don't know what we're seeing.
There is no other answer. That God is present, what is we are the ones who are not present to
(21:57):
the God who is with us. Any good contemplative order will tell you that every single day.
That's the Benedictine way, isn't it? To see God in everyday ordinary life, in one another,
in creation. That's what happens if you live out the Beatitudes, you begin to see God.
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You know, the spiritual nugget in this tiny little rule of Benedict from the year 300
is humility. It took them centuries to recognize that it is chapter seven on humility in the rule
of Benedict that is our spirituality. You have to be there. You have to know humility between you
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and the world, the Christian world, God's world. Inside yourself, you know who you are and you're
working on it already. Then you must understand everything that goes around you and give it your
best look. And then in the last four of those elements, you don't hurt anybody. Anybody.
(23:19):
And you don't even laugh at them. You don't reject them. They're just yours now.
So these two pieces, they fall in line. But especially, it's these,
(23:42):
the whole notion of the Beatitudes is to find out what happiness is, not blessedness is.
That's nothing but an invoking a prayer on the guy next to you. This is the real thing.
Okay.
And it is who you become when you inherit these eight Beatitudes, when you become a
(24:11):
person. When you breathe them out and breathe them in. You got it.
I am hearing you reflect on the journey of the Beatitudes, the poor in spirit, mourning and
meek and humble and gentle and hungry and thirst for justice and being merciful and single-hearted.
(24:32):
Another way I've been looking at all of this lately is as in the end, total surrender to God,
you know, the poor in spirit, you're surrendering to God to be mournful. Wow, you need God and
humble. That's the whole thing. Not my will, your will be done. Hungering and thirst God for justice
and mercy and single-heartedly, and I'm seeing God. That's all I want is to see God. It's taken
(24:58):
me my whole life, Joan, to understand it's a journey of totally surrendering to God. And that's
where it's right there in the Beatitudes. What do you think? Yeah, that is all over the place. Yes,
it is. And how to get there, that's what I love about that. Man, go out and find a charity. Go
see somebody who is hurting and they've been left out of the dinner. Go take care of that,
(25:26):
and you'll feel really good tonight. You're going to have a good night's sleep.
I just wanted to… Well, we have just a few minutes left, so I want to sort of end on back
to hunger and thirsting for justice. And the flip side of that is, well, in my translation,
they will be satisfied. And I all… That's okay. You do it. I want you to do it. Well,
(25:49):
I was thinking of… You draw it together.
Well, my whole life I was wondering, okay, what does that mean? Well, then I thought as a kid,
well, we want the victories of justice. We want apartheid to end. We want the Vietnam War to end.
We want the war in El Salvador, Nicaragua, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or the killing in Gaza,
(26:10):
or Ukraine, or Africa to end. We want poverty to end in hunger. And well, okay, I may not get those.
I'm getting used to the idea. I'm not going to live to see the victory of justice. But then I
thought, if you're still with me on this, I remembered the great book that I read at Duke
in college, Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Gosh, remember? And he said the lesson
(26:37):
of being in Auschwitz was those who survived found meaning in life. And I thought that's what Jesus
is getting at. In other words, if you hunger and thirst for justice, you'll be satisfied. You will
find the ultimate meaning in life. You're no longer about I, me, mine. You are about justice for all
(26:58):
the poor of the world. And that's a journey of both mercy and humility and single-mindedness.
But I thought, well, if that's true, that that works for me, because I always wanted meaning in
my life, Joan. And I think Jesus is saying that. And maybe the victories of justice too, but
(27:19):
definitely this deep, deep, holy, almost contentment that the best thing we can do with our lives
in a world of total injustice is to work for justice and mercy. What do you think? Tell us
about that.
I will next week.
Oh, we're going to end there.
You told me this was the end.
(27:40):
Okay. So we'll pick up there, and then we'll move into the great teachings about peacemaking.
Yes.
So thank you so much, Sister Joan, for speaking with me today. And thank you, friends, for
listening to the Nonviolent Jesus podcast. And you can hear more podcasts and find other
(28:01):
Zoom programs at www.beattitudecenter.org. This has been part two of my conversation with Sister
Joan. Join me next week when we have the final part three of my conversation with Sister Joan
Chidister on Jesus and the Beatitudes. And so, may the God of peace bless all of you.
(28:22):
Keep on following the Nonviolent Jesus and living out the Beatitudes. And see you next time.
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