He Sweetens Our Joys with His Sorrows

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. (Matthew 5:4)On the face of it, Jesus’s second beatitude seems the closest to contradiction. Blessed — that is, happy — are those who mourn? The eighth and final beatitude on the persecuted and reviled comes close. But being persecuted and happy isn’t quite as paradoxical as being grieved and happy.We might miss this irony because we don’t really know what blessedness means. Today we can’t rehearse enough what this blessedness is and is n