Their gaze is fixed upon the ocean of human suffering, and the incertitude of our eternal fate. They are entirely filled with the thought of how “fearful a thing” it is “to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). “With fear and trembling” (Tob. 13:6) do they walk along their lives’ path. Their sins and the specter of their failure continually haunt their vision.

Well as they know that Christ has redeemed us and pronounced the words, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25), their minds dwell almost exclusively on the remoteness of mankind from God, the power of evil, the multitude of daily insults to God; on the helplessness of man and his dependence on the brute forces of nature; on their own weakness, the impotence of the human will, the tragic character of all terrestrial life.

Other Christians overlook the disharmony still remaining after the Redemption

Others, on the contrary, overlook the fact that we are still pilgrims in the valley of tears. They tend to behave as though Redemption meant that we are already in our heavenly home; as though we no longer had to fear anything; as though all disharmony were removed from the world; as though life no longer had any laborious tasks in store for us but was meant to be one everlasting feast of jubilation.

“Blessed are they that mourn. . .” comforts the afflicted

Both these classes of Christians respond inadequately to the duality which, even after the Redemption, remains in our terrestrial situation, according to the words of Our Lord: “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:5), which should be considered, here, side by side with these others, spoken by the Apostle of the Nations: “Rejoice in the Lord always: again, I say, rejoice” (Phil. 4:4).

In the beatitudes (Matt. 5:3-11), the way Our Lord refers each time to a heavenly reward is meant to indicate the eminent value of the quality praised. As regards the words “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” or again “Blessed are the clean of heart,” this is evident enough. But the meaning of “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted” is less easy to understand. Why should they that mourn be called blessed! Can it be that a particular value is attached to sorrow as such?

To be sure in this case it is not only the value of the attitude in question which the blessing is meant to convey. This word is destined to comfort “all that labor and are burdened” (Matt. 11:28); it is a manifestation of divine mercy. To all those who have to suffer on earth—the oppressed and disinherited, the sick and the poor, the lonely, the downcast, the afflicted—this word reveals that the valley of tears is not reality ultimate and definitive, It implies that they are to come into their own in that final home where “God wipes away all tears.”

It is a ray of light piercing through earth’s darkness and brightening up the path of the weary and despondent, of those beset by despair. It is addressed, above all, to “them that” still “sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Luke 1:79): it eminently represents the Eu angelion, the joyful tidings of Christ. This word by itself modifies the terrestrial situation of man. It opens the gates of eternity. It reveals to mankind that earthly life is but a status viae.