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From Darkness to Light has three chapters, each on the theme of the title. I will give a brief introduction and then a short excerpt.

Chapter 1 is Christ and the thief, and it is a profound meditation on 3 men dying together at Golgotha, Christ in the middle. We watch closely Jesus’ final hours and the impact they have on one of the men.

Here is a brigand who is converted at the hour of his death. This should cause us to reflect on the death of less respectable folk, even notorious pagans. Here is a man on his way to paradise when all the world would consign him to hell. Here is a man who dies sanctified by a word from Jesus . . . only Jesus cares, as a shepherd cares for each of his sheep, even the sheep that is lost. Blessed Jesus! . . . No-one other than the Spirit can bring us into the intimacy of the Father and the Son, because, in God, this intimacy of Father and Son is shared with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit alone can introduce us into the trinitarian intimacy . . . There is no pathway of conversion without the breath of the Holy Spirit . . . With his last prayer, Christ teaches the thief how to die and through this teaching accompanies him in death . . . Death has no power. The thief may freely offer his spirit to God in a supreme liberty which despoils death of its prize.

Chapter 2 concerns Psalm 88. Daniel treats the psalm literally as the words of a dying man in pain; great pain and great trust in God.

Many centuries before Christ, perhaps a thousand years, a man was dying, one Heman, who fulfilled the function of singer in the temple in Jerusalem . . . All his life he had stood before God in the sanctuary and had grown in his faith and love for God to such a degree that we can speak of a real intimacy. . . I bless God for this psalm; the prayer is a real treasure, a miracle of faith which I receive with wonderment and thankfulness. It creates in us a thirst for a similar closeness with God; it awakens in us a deep compassion for the dying; it prepares us for the day of our own death . . . in his grace God can strengthen our faith by his Holy Spirit through these words . . . To whom should we turn to teach us to pray this psalm in its profound truth and to live it out fully . . . I can’t see anyone other than Christ himself. Like every good Israelite, Jesus prayed all the psalms including this one. He would have prayed it many times in his life, following the practice of the Jewish liturgy. He appropriated it and was impregnated with it to the point that in his death he begins to resemble what is described here . . .  So, I marvel again and bless God still more for this prayer.

Chapter 3 is Christ and Mary Magdalene. Daniel notes in Mary a state of what he terms ‘obsession.’ She had seen Jesus hang naked on the cross, and after all she has suffered in what she saw, she is morbidly obsessed with Jesus’ body; 3 times she says ‘They have taken away [my Lord] and I don’t know where they have laid him.’ Jesus comes to dispel the darkness and give her a vocation, a calling into new life.

“Light be!” God said on the dawn of the world’s first morning, and light was. Mary enters the garden early in the morning on the first day of the week, in the dawning light. It is the hour when the Father, in silence, ponders afresh the newly created light, while the Holy Spirit hovers over the waters . . . She turns to see the Living One, then she turns again, as if in an internal dance, to unceasingly contemplate the Well-Beloved.

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This would be the best place to start looking at the contribution of the Greek Fathers. Translating more directly from the French would see the title as ‘Maladies of the spiritual life,’ where ‘maladies’ refers to a well-worked system of diagnosis in pastoral care. These have tended to become known, misleadingly, in the western world as the 7 deadly sins; that is not what they are — they are malaises which militate against spiritual life, malaises which stand in need of a physician, and God is that physician as Daniel shows in the opening character, referring particularly to Jesus as healing sin. Chapter 2 is a lengthy look at the passage in Genesis about Cain, a passage in which we see ‘A divine consultation’ as God speaks to Cain. I would say this was a foundational teaching about the sin which ‘crouches at the door’ and how God wants us to deal with it; how I wish I had encountered such teaching 20 years earlier than I did! This chapter exemplifies the God as Physician of chapter 1. The third chapter, ‘The Fathers’ Medicine,’ looks at the schema adopted by the Fathers and its use, with a focus on Jesus as the vanquisher of the passions.

I would regard this book as seminal. The resources it points to are neglected to our cost.

Because of its ‘seminal’ nature, a number of excerpts are posted here.

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“I” have so many questions about prayer! “I” am prepared to scour the earth in search of a teacher and a school of prayer, but sensing beforehand it would surely be fruitless . . .

Who will teach us to pray? To this question the Bible proposes an answer that is amazing, unprecedented and wonderful:

The one who will teach us to pray is none other than God himself . . .

How does God go about teaching us to pray? What is his method; how does he teach? It’s not by coming to conduct a course on prayer, though he might and we would be happy about it; no, he does much better; he demonstrates his own prayer, he gives it to us; not just one prayer, but a hundred and fifty! What he gives us is the Book of Psalms, and the Book of Psalms is in fact 150 prayers of God, offered to us . . . In the kingdom of prayer, there are 150 entranceways; we may go in by any one of them, and each time we will discover God in a different aspect . . . Were you looking for the words to pray? They are here! All the words for prayer are in this Book of Psalms, words of trust, of thanksgiving, of repentance, of praise, of pain, of compassion, of intercession, every facet of prayer, both private and communal . . .

Such is the Book of Psalms . . . a studio of prayer where God stands to behold his work, a school of prayer with 150 entrances . . . What place has our poor prayer beside these 150 treasures? . . . It is this, our personal prayer, before which God guards the deepest silence, to which he listens with infinite attention. Our personal prayer is Psalm 151! In this prayer, God contemplates the splendor which is ours; in it he recognizes the fruit of his grace.

Daniel opens this book with a consideration of prayer in general, of prayer as the highest activity of which we are capable, as our splendour, but also as attended by difficulties. We therefore need help, and here we turn to the Psalms as God given prayer, the Father teaching us to pray (ch 2). We also know that Jesus prayed the Psalms, and it is as we understand the psalms on the lips of Jesus, not just those he actually quoted, that we enter fully into their meaning. In the fourth chapter, we look for and find the Holy Spirit in the Psalms, before a brief final chapter on what Daniel calls Psalm 151, our personal prayer which emerges out of the silence of meditation.

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. . . when he called his disciples, Jesus invited them to follow him, to march behind him. Later he invited them to come a little nearer, to come alongside him, to take up the same yoke. Finally, on the evening before his passion, believing that his disciples were ready to hear something still greater, Jesus began to speak to them of a bond of unsurpassable depth, not simply “behind” him, not “alongside” him, but “in” him! . . . We in him and he in us; what is this saying?

This excerpt from the third chapter of Becoming a Disciple summarizes the book, which has three chapters: Come follow me, ie behind; Come unto me — alongside; and Abide in me. Daniel presents these as three successive stages. In the first, he comments particularly on Jesus’ drawing power; where we might marvel at the would be disciples for their willingness to leave everything to follow Jesus, Daniel notes the attraction of the character of Jesus, which is his usual focus anyway. Come unto me speaks at length about taking on the yoke of Jesus, learning to work together with him, in tandem, not pulling and chaffing, but learning to harmonize with he who is gentle and lowly. The final chapter, with other issues, focuses on Christ as the vine, the sap of the vine flowing into our lives.

. . . Allowing ourselves to be loved by Christ means opening up to him, committing ourselves to him, abandoning ourselves to him in full confidence, knowing that his love is for every day and not occasional, that it is continuing, like the sap in the branch, but also hidden, unseen and even imperceptible, beyond our awareness . . . Nevertheless, even if it is more often than not unperceived, Jesus tells us there is no greater love than his . . . . . we have so many reticences, brakes, blockages and at times even refusals . . . How long it takes to become truly a disciple, fully a disciple, much longer than for a branch to be a branch! . . . [but] happy are they who know themselves loved unceasingly, day and night, infinitely! Happy are they who know that the love of Christ is fully sufficient for life, and who live by this!

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This volume is a great example of biblical meditation as Daniel looks behind the words on the pages of the different gospel accounts of Jesus’ passion, examining them through the lens of a particular concern — At first sight [the Father’s silence]during the Passion has something troubling or even shocking about it since it seems the silence of absence. It may seem troubling, but we need to pass over this first impression; when we consider it a little more closely, approaching it in prayer, the silence is revealed as extremely rich, of surprising beauty, of such depth of humble love as to turn our ideas upside down, and we become immersed in the silence of contemplation and adoration.

The theme is explored in 9 passages or under 9 headings. 1. The way Jesus talks about his coming death, avoiding mentioning his Father as having a role. 2. The parable of the vinedressers, as found in all three synoptic gospels – ‘perhaps,’ the father says, ‘they will respect my son.’ 3. Gethsemane, where, though Jesus addresses the Father, the Father does not openly reply. 4. Before the Sanhedrin, where, in a subtlety of the text referring back to Leviticus 24, we find a door open, provided by the Father, for the Sanhedrin to reconsider. 5. Before Pilate, where scarcely noticeably, God again intervenes to offer a way at as he visits Pilate’s wife in a dream. 6. The person of Simon of Cyrene, a fatherly figure, helping Jesus bear his cross. 7. On the cross itself, where Jesus is granted the comfort of the ‘penitent thief.’ 8. In the actions of another individual, Joseph of Arimathea, caring for Jesus’ broken body. 9. In Psalm 22.

I would say this book is a profound theological statement about the Cross. Perhaps I shouldn’t pick out particular passages in a very consistent, strong work, and in fact, when I think about it, I can’t really, although I have found parts 6 and 7 notably excellent! This is probably along with 3 or 4 others, the most strongly recommended of Daniel’s books.

God’s silence during the Passion is his silence before men, to be sure, and particularly before Christ in his perfect and total humanity, but it is not this alone; there is much more; it is also the Father’s silence before the Son, which is to say, it is a silence instinct within the inexpressible mystery of the Trinity . . . It is here that the silence is transfigured; it comes before us as infinitely more profound than the silences of earth. It is a silence beyond words and beyond all silence, a silence of unfathomable depth, that of Trinitarian intimacy. Who am I to speak of this? What could I say? Nothing, except that, since in God everything is love, including his silence, it cannot be other than a silence of love, the silence of the Father’s ineffable love for the Son . . .

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This is a good place to start with Daniel’s books and is likely to touch themes one might not have considered before. It’s a book that points the way into many of the themes that Daniel explores in his writings. In particular, there is the theme which in French is pudeur, the pudeur of God, a word which, perhaps typically of the forthright nature of English language, we can’t readily translate. It implies a sense of modesty, of reserve, delicacy, almost of shame; and applied to God, it is a sense of reluctance to talk about self, and one’s strong feelings, particularly of tenderness.

In his introductory chapter, Daniel sees God’s tenderness exemplified in Jesus’ response to the widow of Nain (Luke 7:13), “he was moved with compassion.”  He proceeds to explore the tenderness evinced by Jesus under 3 headings: Compassionate Tenderness, Merciful Tenderness, and Infinite Tenderness. The first of these 3 chapters looks at Ezekiel 16, the birth of Jerusalem — where the tenderness of God is focused in compassion on the innocent. The second chapter is from Jeremiah 31:18–20, where God extends merciful tenderness to guilty Ephraim. Then the final chapter has to do with Isaiah 25:6–9, where God wipes away the tears from every eye. The focus is always on God’s tenderness. The following are a few excerpts.

The tenderness of God . . . these simple words are so great, so far beyond understanding, so holy, that there is little to do but prostrate oneself on the ground in silence! Such a subject certainly cannot be approached as simply a theme for reflection to satisfy our intellectual curiosity; it is a mystery, an unfathomable mystery, which plunges us into the depths of the heart of God . . . The tenderness of God; the subject is enough to cause one’s lips to be sealed forever in humble silence . . . I would never have dared to speak of such a great mystery had I not been invited to do so by my spiritual father, Father Etienne, who one day said to me simply, “You know, Daniel, it would be good if you spoke to us about the tenderness of God.” I accepted this word in profound silence and I prayed . . . Another factor which impels me to write is the thirst for tenderness among the people around us; there are so many, young and old, who are ready to undertake almost anything, do anything, no matter what, because of this longing; and for so many of them, young and old, it becomes a hopeless search; they never suspect, far less know, that the most extraordinary tenderness is God’s, that the very source of all tenderness is in him.

“I am moved inwardly.” Here God reveals to us that he is deeply moved, inwardly. It is God himself who, on one hand, unveils his tenderness . . .  he who hides from one and unveils to other, as it seems best to him. We need simply to take this in and be silent, as was Jeremiah before such a great mystery. Jeremiah is silent before something God had never previously revealed in such terms. God veils and unveils at one and the same time in a great mystery, a mystery which we see incarnated in Jesus Christ, the mystery which was hidden since before the foundation of the world and unveiled in the fullness of time, [Jesus] the tenderness of God incarnated . . . To watch the Father wiping tears away from every face could not but birth in us an immense tenderness towards him. We will then be overwhelmed with this tenderness and in an instant our hearts, until then so hard and insensitive to the tenderness of God, will become soft and tender. We will be transformed in our hearts by this act alone, and our innermost beings moved with tenderness . . .

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The title is translated literally from the French. Initially this seemed rather cumbersome, so I tended to use for myself the simple title John 17, which says a great deal — there could hardly be a more interesting chapter in the Bible, and to hear from Daniel on this must be worthwhile! The French title does, however, convey a lot, so, for publication, we opted to keep the original and add a subtitle Reflections on Jesus’ prayer in John 17.

The subject is sanctification, and Jesus’ prayer that his disciples be sanctified. Only God can sanctify because only God is holy. Jesus is God and he alone can say, “I have sanctified myself”, but now with his last prayer, the last words he speaks before his disciples and to his Father, he asks that his disciples be sanctified. Why?

Well, it goes in two directions. Firstly, the world and indeed the cosmos is holy, a “sanctuary”, and to live within this holy place, as “priests unto God” offering praise and worship requires of us that we be holy. In referring to “the foundation of the world”, Jesus likens the creation to a temple, and in this temple God has placed humanity as his living image; our place — to proclaim the glory of God. Hence the need for us to be sanctified.

Secondly, though, the world is a battlefield; God has a holy war and we need to be sanctified as warriors to engage in this war, the war of love. The war also goes in two directions, outwardly towards the world, and inwardly too, in the heart, which leads to what is with Daniel a familiar theme, the monk and inner discipline; however, the key point here is Jesus’ prayer and statement, “sanctify them through the truth; thy word is truth.”

Another wonderful book. The themes will be familiar to readers of Daniel’s other books, but with their own particular slant here. Broadly, the theme is repentance and cleansing; of particular value is the distinction between forgiveness and cleansing, with its outworkings.

The book opens with a look at the 10 lepers of whom one, the Samaritan, returned for further cleansing. Leprosy is the very picture of the unclean or impure; it meant not just physical and social but also spiritual exclusion; lepers had no access to the Temple and therefore no access to God; how then could they pray? They couldn’t! The impossibility of the impure approaching the pure sets the theme for the book, and, of course, wonderfully, the purity of Jesus overcomes, here by no more than a look. But how can this be? We need detail!

Some detail is provided in the account of Leviticus 14. There was a 3 stage cleansing; firstly to return to society, then to the family, then later, on a day outside normal time, the 8th day, to God. In the first two stages the man had a part to play himself, but stage 3 was entirely an act of God. This leads us into chapter 2, a look at Psalm 51 – “create in me a clean heart, O God.” David had no ground for hope in himself of cleansing – nothing but rottenness and impurity and yet he dared cry out to God for intimate healing – “open thou my lips.” This result would follow not forgiveness but cleansing, a distinction which is carefully brought out.

How in fact can an impure heart cry out to God? The theme Daniel develops is that God hides himself in the secret place, in the hidden places of darkness, that is precisely in the human heart, and it is from here that He operates to cleanse.

In the final chapter, Daniel turns to the early Fathers, John Climacus and Macarius, both of whom discuss tears, the tears of penitence as cleansing – but again, how can an impure heart produce pure, cleansing tears? Can it be possible that the tears of God as told by Jeremiah and seen in Jesus – can it be that His tears mingle with ours to cleanse and heal, the tears of God that flow from the hidden place of our heart? Can we say this for sure? Perhaps not. Can we think about it? We can indeed.

As of Nov 2017, this was Daniel Bourguet’s latest book, and there is a sense in which, theologically, it his weightiest, since it is concerned with one issue, the deity/divinity of Jesus. It is also the first volume we have published with The People’s Seminary Press.

At one or two places in his books, Daniel says approvingly that an idea is ‘Trinitarian’; this is an emphasis in thought that says not so much that we are personally working out our identity in relationship to God, but that we find our identity in Christ as we look no longer at ourselves but at the Trinity. (That at least is something of my understanding.) So, this book is a prolonged meditation in the Trinity through the lens of Jesus’ baptism, and I must say that reading through the work and translating it had a profound impact on me.

There are 5 chapters. The first is concerned with Jesus’ encounter with Thomas, when Thomas calls him “My Lord and my God”. The profundity and impact of this statement is explored, leading into the second chapter which looks at what Paul, Peter, John and Jesus himself have to say about Jesus’ divinity. (If Jesus is not divine, then there is no Trinity.) At the end of these and the other three chapters, there is an imaginative “Prayer of Andrew”, as he is seen seated under an olive tree shortly after the resurrection and Thomas’ statement, as he reflects on events and prays. Then the final chapters look in turn at the different accounts of the theophany that took place at Jesus’ baptism. In each gospel, the details are slightly different, presenting the Trinity in slightly varying ways, and this is the food for much thought. Who spoke, when, to whom? How was the Spirit “like a dove”? How are the Old Testament scriptures used? Daniel covers some ground familiar to his readers, perhaps particularly with regard to Jesus’ act of repentance in being baptized (see Repentance — Good News!), but, bound together by the theme of the Trinity, it comes across in a fresh and strong way. As with the other books, it will repay constant re-reading.

Note: in The final discourse before the cross, Daniel says the following: Contemplation has the extraordinary effect of healing distress, and the disciples had plenty of cause for distress awaiting them. Yes, contemplation heals, comforts and brings peace, the very peace of which the disciples had such need, the peace which Jesus alone can give since the world cannot (14:27). This must be at least as true of On the banks as any contemplative work you could encounter.

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It may be a little tiresome to read again that ‘this is a wonderful book’, however the statement is perhaps doubly so here. In his excellent study, The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard suggests how poverty stricken a group must be that fails to understand its most seminal texts, saying, I suppose correctly, that this is true of the Beatitudes. It follows that Daniel’s book should be prescribed reading in every church! The following is an attempt to combine a number of quotations from the book with comments so as take us through some of the essential points. (Note: I have been in a considerable quandary over whether to begin each beatitude with “blessed” or “happy”: I seem finally to have opted for “blessed” in the publication.)

Happy are the poor – Jesus welcomes and salutes the afflicted, the hungry, the persecuted . . . The whole world is welcomed with open arms by the man on the mountain, his gaze fixed on those to whom no one had ever spoken in like manner. Nobody could believe their ears to feel themselves thus welcomed, recognized, taken into account. Jesus speaks to all of blessing; he gives entrance, admittance, into the Kingdom of God, and that’s it!

These words of welcome are not burdening anyone with a new law, with commandments we cannot fulfil; on the contrary they usher us into the Kingdom. Daniel emphasizes strongly that the beatitudes do not constitute some kind of new law to obey; that while there are parallels with Moses going up into a mountain to receive the law, the contrasts are greater. Jesus sits down – to teach. “Teacher” – this is wisdom literature – the search for the good life. The beatitudes are sign posts along the way to the good life (poor now – blessed later). I would make a point here that is pertinent with regard to the opening chapter that  to call them ‘beautiful attitudes’ is not initially appropriate – there is nothing attitudinal here at all – these are facts – being poor – and behaviours, being meek; however, this is not the direction Daniel pursues later. He goes on to say that the Beatitudes correspond so closely to Christ’s experience, they recount so closely Jesus’ inner life and its extreme outcome, that in the end they are a description of Christ. Certainly — the Beatitudes describe Christ! The beatitudes are the sage, the teacher, following his own prescription – as proven by events, and this is a reason they can be trusted as more than merely ideals. Again, though, Jesus is welcoming all – while describing Christ too, the description is plural – ‘the poor’ is multiple. We will never be alone on the journey of the poor and meek  – and if there is only one fellow traveller, it will be Jesus.

The Beatitudes become in this way a program for life, which has nothing to do with law. Law is imposed on us from outside, whereas a life project is an interior desire, a thirst which has been created within us. (!) As Daniel later goes on to examine how each beatitude works, he shows the way Jesus was able to see the sort of people he is talking about in the crowd. The beatitudes are addressed to the world, not to a limited group. It is how to see the world from the high and lofty place, how to see people. It is truly a transformation of our outlook when we see the crowds as bearers of the hope of the Kingdom … A gaze that is fixed on the crowds to draw to the surface all that is hidden, but without violating anyone’s heart, this is the gaze of Christ — and how blind am I! Living in the light of the Beatitudes is indeed to behave towards the people in the crowd as we would behave towards those who will be termed sons of God.

The first chapter concludes by saying that the disciples’ initial experience was of seeing Jesus as a healer – so they would have seen the beatitudes as a description of the science of healing! But then they find that wisdom and healing go together. And in the end they learn to see Jesus as more than a sage and healer – God!

The second chapter discusses the literary structure of the beatitudes – that there are always 2 propositions, one present tense, the second future – with the blessing in the present rooted in the future. This is an important basis for the ensuing discussion of each beatitude, each of which is seen as 1. As describing Jesus 2. As describing the disciples 3. As describing the crowds 4. As a prescription for wisdom and healing. As noted above a different direction is now taken, towards attitude. In the discussion of the poor in spirit, for example, the malady of avarice is in view, in contrast to Jesus not being attached to things.

The main discussion of this first beatitude concerns renunciation of both physical and spiritual wealth in favour of God – He is our one goal.  ‘…the task is also to reach the wealthy affected by the same avarice, not in order to deprive them of their assets but to teach them to deprive themselves through renunciation. How are we to teach both groups to be thankful for the good things they have received? How are we to teach them to share the things that come to them from another? And how are we to lead them to discover that this other is God . . . ?’

We seek to be meek NOT in order to inherit the earth! No, the goal is to be with the one who is meek and lowly of heart. The meek resist anger because they are exempt from it, or healed of it. Anger is the malady this Beatitude reveals, anger, the fever of which produces violence.

A common theme in Daniel is the efficacy of tears, and here he says that tears quench anger. This theme continues with the discussion of mourning. Jesus mourns with true grief at Lazarus’ tomb. The sickness here is false grief, shallow grief. Do we truly grieve over Christ’s death? Did the disciples? We are on the path of healing when we weep over his death. Tears and meditation purify our grief. We will be healed when we weep as Christ wept over Lazarus’ death; our tears will then be steeped in divine love, in the Father’s love at the foot of the cross.What is our attitude towards the crowds in the light of this Beatitude? Jesus saw in the crowd those who were true mourners. His insight is such that he sees in the crowd those who are truly wounded by death; and they are perhaps more numerous than we think. We too must learn how to discern them and give them time and space for their grief, time to vent their pain, without making a show of our resurrection preaching too quickly. We can begin by pointing, not necessarily to the risen Christ, but to him as, along with them, truly grieved, in silence alongside them, also weeping at the tomb of a friend. We can begin by pointing to the one who, in silence at the foot of the cross, is at the heart of grief, at the heart of every act of mourning. If we preach to the mourning that Christ mourns with them and the Father mourns with them, then we will come, in due course, to the preaching of the Resurrection. The true mourner (Jesus) is also the true comforter.

In French the term we translate as righteousness is typically justice. … if, unhappily, we have the slightest suspicion that injustice might come from God, or, at least, if we have trouble seeing his justice, then our thirst becomes unbearable. Daniel points out that Jesus hungered and thirsted for justice – and didn’t receive it, but behaved always in accordance with it. With us however our sickness is that we are so easily satisfied with a substitute for justice, and cheat the hunger of others with our distorted righteousness. They (so many people) cry out to the whole world without knowing who will satisfy them truly; at times they receive some scrap of justice and are satisfied for a day or two, briefly cheating their hunger, but there are always those who are seeking afresh true justice, that of men woven in with God’s. It is upon those who are hungry and thirsty in this way that Jesus fixes his eyes, and towards whom he points his disciples. If only we could make them at least understand how close Christ is to them, so close as to call them his brothers, the ‘least of these my brethren . . .‘

Among the crowd there are [also] the pure in heart. What an amazing insight this is of Christ, Christ who fixes his eyes not on the exterior but on the heart! The inside look links up with the inner lives of others; the pure heart sees the pure in heart. Only a pure heart can see a pure heart, and this is why we fail to see what Christ sees.This is the remedy (to impurity)-  ‘Give alms of what you have, and behold, all things will be pure to you‘ (Luke 11:41)

A difficulty here is if, rather than purity of heart,  your only desire is to see God, you will fall into the first pitfall laid by the tempter, who is a past master of the art of illusion. You will mistake as a vision of God, as an ecstasy or a spiritual experience, something which in fact is no more than illusion. Therefore do not thirst for visions or wonders (Jer 45:5) . . . We must begin humbly with the management of our own cell! When it comes to seeing God, the Fathers remind us that God is already present in our heart, that this is his temple, his dwelling-place, the seat of his Kingdom.

With the quality of mercy the malaise is being merciful in expectation of receiving something back in returen. This is the only beatitude with no imbalance in the promise – those who are merciful will receive – mercy. If our mercy is disinterested, only then is there likely to be a disinterested, abundant return as in the case of the sheep, those who give a glass of water and receive a kingdom.

The French for peacemakers is rather nice – literally it would translate as artisans of peace. Daniel stresses that peace is a gift of God. ‘My peace I give to you.’ In our spiritual warfare against the passions, our whole being is mobilized for a battle in which no quarter is given, but when we emerge victorious we discover to our wonderment that the victory is altogether God’s. 

Persecution is aimed at bringing about a betrayal, and may be heavy or slight – just not standing up for Jesus as we should. In persecution we can be stripped of everything and yet have everything – as was Jesus. Being persecuted for righteousness sake is about giving peace, but we cannot give what we don’t have, so attention must be paid to our own hearts. It is the fruit of a struggle – of Jesus’ agony against anything that rises up against the will of God; but the objective is not merely personal: David fought his personal battle with Goliath, but it was on behalf of the nation…

In the end we see that it is Christ who does it all and who fulfills all the beatitudes, and so, in a closing brief chapter, Daniel has the disciples going back up the mountain and there praising Jesus as they ascribe the beatitudes to him as the only one worthy to be thus described.

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Finally, there is one very striking passage I would like to quote at length, one that is very pertinent to evangelism:

Wisdom, a way of seeing the world

The Beatitudes describe Christ, and us too when we set out to follow him. But this is not all; we must not forget the crowds at the foot of the mountain. It is with the crowds in view that Christ teaches the disciples: “Blessed are they,” Jesus says; not, “Blessed are you, you disciples . . .”; and not, “Blessed are you, you and me . . .” but, “Blessed are they . . .” It atrophies the Beatitudes to limit them to Christ and ourselves; their scope is much greater than the church, taking in the whole world.

Jesus teaches the disciples, but he is looking at the crowds and speaking about them. This is both of prime importance and, in itself, salutary. It erases any tendency in us to see the world in black and white, any idea which really comes to saying, “Blessed are the disciples, unblessed are the crowds!” No, Jesus is speaking here about blessing for all, the disciples and crowds alike. It changes our outlook to think that blessing is for the crowds as well as for the disciples; among the crowds are those who are blessed!

The Beatitudes are not prayer; not that praying them is disallowed, but it is not their primary import; they are not spoken with God in view but the crowds of people. They are a lesson in how to see the world, the world as seen from high on a mountain, through the eyes of Christ. It is not we who speak the Beatitudes but Christ, and we hear him speaking about the masses of people. When we repeat the Beatitudes, in reality we are listening to Christ pronounce them and telling us through them how he sees the world. We learn that, as he sees the crowds, he sees the poor in spirit, those who hunger for righteousness, the pure in heart, and our gaze is borne towards those he is describing; we seek them in the crowd. As we do so, the Beatitudes transform our hearts as well as the way we see. It is a great privilege for us to be able to go over the Beatitudes in the middle of each day, as we walk down the street, as we look at the crowds of people, searching among them for those to whom Christ has promised the Kingdom. It is truly a transformation of our outlook when we see the crowds as bearers of the hope of the Kingdom; a transformation to discover, with wonderment, sons of God in the crowds; a transformation of outlook to consider the world with the tenderness of the one who bends over the afflicted to dry their tears.

But how many are there in these crowds who correspond to the description of the Beatitudes? Not everyone is like this! How are we to pick out those who Christ’s eyes are upon? How many are there? Some would say that those with pure hearts, those who are hungry for righteousness rather than superficial well-being, that these people are very rare; as rare as nuggets of gold in the sand of a river. Others, contrastingly, would say they are as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore. Frankly, my insight is not acute enough to decide one way or the other; it is so difficult to tell! Hidden within this rich man, who I would discount in favor of the poor, there might be a meek heart; behind the anger of this person who I overlook as I search for the meek, perhaps there is a poor person, or someone who thirsts for justice. So many of the meek are hidden, for sure; so many of the poor, so many afflicted too! How many among the crowd there are who are reconciled to burying their tears, hiding their meekness, concealing the purity of their hearts because the world has taught them that these attributes have no currency. A gaze that is fixed on the crowds to draw to the surface all that is hidden, but without violating anyone’s heart, this is the gaze of Christ — and how blind am I!

The Beatitudes renew and transform our outlook on the world, but without imparting a religious outlook which would look for those who pray or perform some kind of religious rite — the ones we would declare blessed! Neither do they impart the outlook of a judge who is looking for whether people do or do not observe God’s law. No, they impart a quite different outlook, the outlook of a wisdom of which the world knows nothing, that look of tenderness which is Christ’s.

If that is the way the world is, then we will suddenly be overtaken by a desire to come down from the mountain, to leave it behind and rejoin the crowds, there to wonder at the blessed ones we find among them. Surely the disciples must have seen the crowds in a new light after they came back down the mountain.

As we too gather ourselves and start our way back down, we take a good look at the disciples around us as well as ourselves, looking further, in light of the Beatitudes, into what Christ sees.

We go back down the mountain, but perhaps we will say nothing; after all, Jesus addressed the Beatitudes to the disciples, not to the crowds. There is no doubt that passing on such things to the crowd is not easy! Perhaps we will say nothing, but we will certainly behave differently. Living in the light of the Beatitudes is indeed to behave towards the people in the crowd as we would behave towards those who will be termed sons of God, towards those who will be comforted, set right, inheritors of the earth . . . We will behave towards the crowds as towards ground that has been tilled and is ready to be sown for blessing.

We will regard the crowd with all the more love and wonderment because in the midst of them is the one who is poor par excellence, the meek, the crucified . . . The Beatitudes describe Christ as eternally present among the crowds, the one who is truly called the Son of God. Blessed crowd, amongst whom stands the one who is, who was and who is to come, the one the sandals of whose feet I am unworthy to untie!