3 November 2024
Calvary is for you, from Him, a gift. Blessed are those who are given
to. They are “the poor in spirit” of the first Beatitude. If there is any hope
of deliverance, it can only come from God. The poor in spirit wait on the Lord.
As He gives, they are given to. His giving to them is not blocked or hindered
by what they have crammed together and would use for bargaining. “God gives
into empty hands,” says Augustine, not into hands full of what we would boast
of before God. There is no room for the gifts to be given into. Sometimes, with
drastic mercy, our Father empties our hands so there may be room for His gifts.
Blessed are those who are given to by God. Blessed are they who receive their
death as a gift from His hands. Nothing is outside His hands. Despite the pain
and perplexity of any way of dying, we are never outside His hands, and within
His hands and from His hands our deaths are a gift by way of which He brings us
to the fullness of His promises. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).
In the Gospel this word “blessed” is always in relation to Jesus. It
rings with gladness. […] But happiness is often something so fleeting or
shallow, and here is something from our Lord, a lively, joyful gift for all our
living and all our dying. Not spoonfuls, not bucketfuls, but the “river of the
water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the
Lamb” (Revelation 22:1). “For from his fullness we have all received, grace
upon grace” (John 1:16). You were “buried with him in baptism, in which you
were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who
raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:12). You who were dead in sin God made
alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our sins, having blotted out
the charges of the Law against us. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross.
“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who
is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians
3:3–4).
Norman Nagel
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