A LAY CISTERCIAN’S BEATITUDES

As a result of my Lection Divina, and having reflected on where I am in the process of believing in The Christ Principle, here are some Beatitudes that come to my mind. If you are a Catholic, practicing your faith may not always be peaches and cream but may often be the way of the cross. Just because your road is rocky doesn’t mean you are on the wrong road. One thing is clear, nothing can separate us from the heart of Christ Jesus, not ridicule, shaming our practice, discounting our past attempt

• Blessed are you when those you love laugh at you and disrespect your practice of contemplative Cistercian spirituality, dismissing it as so much fantasy and as just a way to seek attention. Christ gives you the opportunity to bear your cross, eyes lowered, saying only, “Have mercy on them for they know not what they say.”
• Blessed are you when those around you verbally block your practice of Cistercian practices saying that you should go to the monastery and leave home and don’t return. You have the opportunity to ask God for patience and fortitude to withstand the forces of the evil one.
• Blessed are you when people call you names such as “loser,” “failure,” and a “fraud,” claiming that God does not like you and what you do. Be glad on that day, for you have the opportunity to return good for evil, love for hatred, and peace for fractioning.
• Blessed are you when people around you shame you and verbally abuse you because you seek to love others as Christ loved you. You are not far from the kingdom of heaven on earth as you battle for what is the way, what is true so that you and your antagonists might have life, now and forever.
• Blessed are you when you can feel hatred and demonic presence when others try to split you from The Lay Cistercian Way by shaming others who join you in this quest. Pray for those who shame and blaspheme your God and Cistercian spirituality as not knowing what they do.
• Blessed are you when your insides feel like they are on fire and to want to abandon your prayer or Lectio Divina because it hurts you to focus on Christ, your reward is to have taken up your cross and carried the martyrdom of the ordinary one step further than before.
• Blessed are you when you struggle against your sexual animal heritage which leads you to false promises and cotton candy nourishment, for you are being fully human not giving in to pleasure as the sole center of your life.
• Blessed are you when you realize that you were signed with the cross at your Baptism and are asked by Christ to continually die to your false self and the desires of the World in order to make the Resurrection real for each day of your life. Your reward is doing God’s will and not your own.