Tuesday, April 30, 2013

4.30.2013 COST OF DISCIPLESHIP 4

MATTHEW 5; OF THE 'EXTRAORDINARINESS' OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE excerpts from chapters 6,13

CHAPTER 6 - THE BEATITUDES

Jesus calls His disciples blessed in the hearing of the crowd,
and the crowd is called upon as a startled witness.
the heritage which god had promised to israel as a whole
is here attributed to the little flock of disciples
whom Jesus had chosen.
'theirs is the kingdom of heaven'.
but disciples and people are one,
for they are all members of the church which is called of God.
hence the aim of this beatitude is to bring
all who hear it to decision and salvation.
all are called to be what in the reality of God
they are already.
the disciples are called blessed
because they have obeyed the call of Jesus
and the people as a whole because they are heirs of the promise.
but will they now claim their heritage
by believing in Jesus Christ and his word?
or will they fall into apostasy by refusing to accept Him?
that is the question which still remains to be answered.

'blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven'.
privation is the lot of the disciples in every sphere of their lives.
they are poor ..(luke 6.20)
...they have no security, no possessions to call their own,
not even a foot of earth to call their home,
no earthly society to claim their absolute allegiance.
nay more, they have no spiritual power, experience or knowledge
to afford them consolation or security.
for His sake they have lost all.
in following Him they lost even their own selves
and everything that could make them rich.
now they are poor
-so inexperienced, so stupid, that they have no other hope
but Him who called them.
Jesus knows all about the others too,
the representatives and preachers of the national religion,
who enjoy greatness and renown,
whose feet are firmly planted on the earth,
who are deeply rooted in the culture and piety of the people
and moulded by the spirit of the age.
yet it is not they, but the disciples who are called blessed
-theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
that kingdom dawns on them,
the little band who for the sake of Jesus live a life
of absolute renunciation and poverty.
and in that very poverty they are heirs of the kingdom.
they have their treasure in secret,
they find it on the cross.
and they have the promise that they will one day
visibly enjoy the glory of the kingdom,
which in principle is already realized
in the utter poverty of the cross.

this beatitude is poles removed from the caricatures of it which
appear in political and social manifestos.
the antichrist also calls the poor blessed,
but not for the sake of the cross,
which embraces all poverty and transforms it into a source of
blessing
he fights the cross with political and sociological ideology.
he may call it christian, but that only makes him
a still more dangerous enemy.

'blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.'
with each beatitude the gulf is widened between the disciples and the people,
their call to come forth from the people becomes increasingly manifest.
by 'mourning' Jesus, of course, means
doing without what the world calls peace and prosperity:
he means refusing to be in tune with the world
or to accommodate oneself to its standards.
such men mourn for the world,
for its guilt, its fate and its fortune.
while the world keeps holiday they stand aside
and while the world sings, 'gather ye rose buds while ye may',
they mourn.
they see that for all the jollity on board, the ship is beginning to sink.
the world dreams of
progress
..power
..the future,
but the disciples meditate on
the end..
the last judgement..
the coming of the kingdom.
to such heights the world cannot rise.
and so the disciples are strangers in the world,
unwelcome guests and disturbers of the peace.
no wonder the world reflects them!
why does the christian church so often have to look on
from outside when the nation is celebrating?
(note: or rejoicing..will God now be heard and sought?... when the nation is at wits end?)
have church men no understanding and sympathy for their fellow men?
have they become victims of misanthropy?
nobody loves his fellow men better than a disciple,
nobody understands his fellowmen better than the christian fellowship
and that very love impels them to stand aside and mourn
it was a happy and suggestive thought of luther,
to translate the greek word here by the german leidtragen (sorrow bearing).
for the emphasis lies on the BEARING of sorrow.
the disciple community does not shake off sorrow
as though it were no concern of its own, but willingly bears it.
and in this way they show how close
are the bonds which bind them to the rest of humanity.
butt at the same time they do not go out of their way
to look for suffering
or try to contract out of it
by adopting an attitude of contempt and disdain.
they simply bear the suffering
which comes their way as they try to follow Jesus Christ,
and bear it for HIS sake.
sorrow cannot tire them or wear them down,
it cannot embitter them or cause them to break down under the strain;
far from it,
for they bear their sorrow in the strength of Him
who bears them up,
who bore the whole suffering of the world upon the cross.
they stand as the bearers of sorrow in the fellowship of the crucified:
they stand as strangers in the world in the power of Him
who was such a stranger to the world
that it crucified Him.
this is their comfort,
or better still, this Man is their comfort, the comforter luke 2.25.
the community of strangers find their comfort in the cross,
they are comforted by being cast upon the place
where the Comforter of israel awaits them.
thus do they find their rue home with their crucified Lord,
both here and in eternity.

'blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
this community of strangers possesses no inherent right of its own
to protect its members in the world,
nor do they claim such rights,
for they are meek,
they renounce every right of heir own and live for the sake of
Jesus Christ.

when reproached, they hold their peace;
when treated with violence they endure it patiently;
when men drive them from their presence, they yield their ground.
they will not go to law to defend their rights,
or make a scene when they suffer injustice,
nor to they insist on their legal rights.
they are determined to leave their rights to God alone..
their right is in the will of their lord
-that and no more.
they show by every word and gesture
that they do not belong to this earth.
leave heaven o them, says the world in its pity,
that is where they belong.
but Jesus says; 'they shall inherit the earth.'
to these, the powerless and he disenfranchised, the very earth belongs.
those who now possess it by violence and injustice shall lose it,
and those who here have utterly renounced it,
who were meek to he point o he cross,
shall rule the new earth.
we must not interpret this as a reference
to God's exercise of juridicial punishment within the wold..
what it means is that when the kingdom of heaven descends, \
the face of the earth will be renewed
and it will belong to the flock of Jesus.
God does not forsake the earth:
He made it, He sent His Son to it,
and on it He built His church.
thus a beginning has already been made in this present age.
a sign has been given.
the powerless have here and now received a plot of earth,
for they have the church and its fellowship,
its good, its brothers and sisters,
in the midst of persecutions even to the length of the cross.
the renewal of the earth begins at golgotha,
where the meek One died,
and from thence it will spread.
when the kingdom finally comes, he meek shall possess the earth.

blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness:
for hey shall be filled.'
not only do the followers of Jesus renounce their rights,
they renounce heir own righteousness too.
they get no praise for their achievements or sacrifices.
they cannot have righteousness except
by hungering and thirsting for it
(this applies equally to their own righteousness
and to the righteousness of god on earth)
always they look forward to the future righteousness of God,
but they cannot establish it or themselves.
those who follow Jesus grow hungry and thirsty on the way.
they are longing for the forgiveness of all sin,
foo complete renewal, for the renewal too of the earth
and the full establishment of God's law.
they are still involved in the world's curse, and affected by its sin.
He whom they follow must die accursed on the cross,
with a desperate cry for righteousness on His lips:
'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'
but the disciple is not above his master,
He follows in His steps.
happy are they who have the promise that they shall be filled,
for the righteousness they receive will be no empty promise,
but real satisfying.
hey will eat the bread of life in the messianic feast.
they are blessed because they already enjoy this bead her and now,
for in their hunger hey are sustained by bread of life,
he bliss of sinners.

'blessed are he merciful, for hey shall obtain mercy'.
these men without possessions of power,
these strangers on the earth,
these sinners,
these followers of Jesus,
have in their life with Him renounced their own dignity,
for they are merciful.
as if their own needs and their own distress were not enough,
they take upon themselves the distress and humiliation and sin of others.
they have an irresistible love o the down trodden,
the sick,
the wretched,
the wronged,
the outcast
and all who are tortured with anxiety.
they o out and seek all who are enmeshed in the oils of sin and guilt.
no distress is too great,
no sin too appalling for their pity.
if any man falls into disgrace,
the merciful will sacrifice their own honour to shield him
and take his shame upon themselves.
they will be found consorting with publicans and sinners,
careless of the shame they incur thereby.
in order that they may be merciful
they cast away the most priceless treasure of human life
their personal dignity and honour.
for the only honour and dignity they know is their Lord's own mercy,
to which alone they owe their very lives.
He was not ashamed of His disciples,
He became the brother of mankind,
and bore their shame unto the death of the cross.
that is how Jesus, the crucified, was merciful.
His followers owe heir lives entirely to hat mercy.
it makes them forget their won honour ad dignity,
ad seek the society of sinners.
they are glad to incur reproach, for they know that then they are blessed.
one day God Himself will come down
and take upon Himself their sin and shame.
He will cover them with his own honour and remove their disgrace.
it will be His glory to bear the shame of sinners
and to clothe them with His honour.
blessed are the merciful, for hey have the merciful for their Lord.

'blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.'
who is pure in heat?
only those who have surrendered their hearts completely to Jesus
that he may reign in them alone.
only those whose hearts are undefiled by their own evil
-and by heir own virtues too.
the pure in heart have a child like simplicity like adam before the fall,
innocent alike of good and evil:
heir hearts are not ruled by heir conscience,
but by the will of Jesus.
if men renounce their own good,
if in penitence they have renounced their own hears,
if they rely solely upon Jesus,
the His word purifies their hearts.
purity of heart is here contrasted with all outward purity,
even the purity of high intentions.
the pure heart is pure alike of good and evil,
it belongs exclusively to Christ
and looks only on Him who goes before.
only they will see God,
who in his life have looked solely unto Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
for then their hearts are free from all defiling fantasies
and are not distracted by conflicting desires and intentions.
they are wholly absorbed by the contemplation of god.
they shall see God,
whose hears have become a reflection of the image of Jesus Christ.

'blessed are the peacemakers; for hey shall be called he children of God.'
the followers of Jesus have been called to peace.
when He called them they found their peace,
for He is their peace.
but now they are told that they must not only have peace but MAKE it.
and to that end they renounce all violence and tumult.
in the cause of Christ nothing is to be gained  by such thoughts.
His kingdom is one of peace,
and the mutual greeting of His flock is a greeting of peace.
His disciples keep the peace by choosing
to endure suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others.
THEY MAINTAIN FELLOWSHIP  WHERE OTHERS WOULD BREAK IT OFF.
they renounce all self assertion
and quietly suffer in the face o hatred and wrong.
in so doing they overcome evil with good
and establish the peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate.
but nowhere will that peace be more manifest than where they meet
the wicked in peace and are ready to suffer at His hands.
the peacemakers will carry the cross with their Lord,
for it was on he cross that peace was made.
now that they are partners in Christ's work of reconciliation,
they are called the sons of god as He is the Son of God.

'blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake:
for heirs is the kingdom of heaven.'
this does not refer to the righteousness of God,
but to suffering in a just cause (not the lack of the definite article),
suffering for their own just judgements and actions.
for it is by these that they who renounce possessions,
fortune, rights, righteousness, honour, and force
for the sake of following Christ,
will be distinguished from the world.
the world will be offended at them,
and so the disciples will be persecuted for righteousness' sake.
not recognition,
but rejection,
is the reward they get from the world or their message and works.
it is important that Jesus gives His blessing not merely
for suffering
incurred directly for the confession of His name,
but suffering in any just cause.
they receive the same promise as the poor,
for in persecution they are their equals in poverty....

CHAPTER 13   THE ENEMY-THE 'EXTRAORDINARY'

you have heard that it was said,
thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy:
but I say unto you,
LOVE YOUR ENEMIES
and PRY FOR THEM THAT PERSECUTE YOU;
that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven;
for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good,
and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.
for if ye love them that love you, what reward have ye?
do not even the publicans the same?
and if ye salute your brethren only,
what do ye more than others?
do not even the gentiles the same?
ye therefore shall be perfect,
as your heavenly Father is perfect. matt. 5.43-8

here, for the first time in the sermon on the mount, we meet the word
which sums up the whole of its message,
the word 'love'.
LOVE IS DEFINED IN UNCOMPROMISING TERMS
AS THE LOVE OF OUR ENEMIES.
had Jesus only told us to love our brethren,
we might have misunderstood what He meant by love,
bug now He leaves us in no doubt whatever as to His meaning.

the enemy was no mere abstraction for the disciples.
they knew Him only too well.
they came across him every day.
there were those who cursed them for undermining
the faith and transgressing the law.
there were those who hated them
for leaving all they had for Jesus' sake.
there were those who insulted and derided them
for their weakness and humility.
there were those who persecuted them as prospective dangerous revolutionaries
and sought to destroy them.
some of their enemies were numbered among the champions of the popular religion,
who resented the exclusive claim of Jesus.
these last enjoyed considerable power and reputation.
and then there was the enemy which would immediately
occur to every jew,  the political enemy in rome.
over and above all these, the disciples also had to contend with
the hostility which invariably falls to the lot of those
who refuse to follow the crowd
and which brought them daily mockery, derision and threats.

it is true that the old testament never explicitly
bids us hate our enemies.
on the contrary, it tells us more than once
that we must love them
(ex. 23.4f; prov. 25.21f; gen. 45.1f; I sam. 24.7; II kings 6.22 etc.)
but Jesus is not talking of ordinary enmity,
but of that which exists between the people of God and the world.
the wars of israel were the only 'holy wars' in history,
for they were the wars of God
against the world of idols.
it is not this enmity which Jesus condemns,
for then he would have condemned the whole history
of g
God's dealings with His people.
on the contrary, he affirms the old covenant.
He is as concerned as the old testament with the defeat of the enemy
and the victory of the people of God.
no, the real meaning of this saying is that Jesus is again releasing his disciples
from the political associations of the old israel.
from now on there can be no more wars of faith.
the only way to overcome our enemy is by loving him.

to the natural man, the very notion of loving his enemies
is an intolerable offence
and quite beyond his capacity:
it cuts across his ideas of good and evil.
more important still, to man under the law,
the idea of loving his enemies is clean contrary
to the law of God,
which requires men to sever all connection with their enemies
and to pass judgement on them.
Jesus, however, takes the law of God in his own hands and
expounds its true meaning.
the will of God, to which the law gives expression,
is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.

in the new testament our enemies are those who harbour hostility against us,
not those against whom we cherish hostility,
for Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility.
the christian must treat his enemy as a brother
and requite his hostility with love.
his behaviour must be determined not by the way others treat him,
but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus;
it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus.

by our enemies Jesus means those who are quite intractable
and utterly unresponsive to our love,
who forgive us nothing when we forgive them all,
who requite our love with hatred and our service with derision,
'for the love that i had unto them, lo,
they now take my contrary part:
but i give myself unto prayer' ps. 109.4
love asks nothing in return,
but seeks those who need it.
and who needs our love more than those who
are consumed with hatred and are utterly devoid of love?
who in other words deserves our love more than our enemy?
where is love more glorified than where she dwells in the midst
of her enemies?

christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another,
except that the more bitter our enemy's hatred,
the greater his need of love.
be his enmity political or religious,
he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus
but unqualified love.
in such love there is no inner discord
between private person and official capacity.
in both we are disciples of Christ, or we are not christians at all.
am i asked how this love is to behave?
Jesus gives the answer:
bless, do good and pray for your enemies
without reserve and without respect of persons.

'LOVE YOUR ENEMIES'
the preceding commandment had spoken only of the passive endurance of evil;
here Jesus goes further and bids us not only to bear with evil
and the evil person patiently,
not only to refrain from treating him as he treats us,
but actively to engage in heart felt love towards him.
we are to serve our enemy in all things without hypocrisy
and with utter sincerity.
no sacrifice which a lover would make for his beloved
is too great for us to make for our enemy.
if out of love for our brother we are willing to sacrifice
good, honour and life,
we must be prepared to do the same for our enemy.
we are not to imagine that this is to condone his evil;
such a love proceeds from strength rather than weakness,
from truth rather than fear
and therefore it cannot be guilty of the hatred of another.
and who is to be the object of such a love,
if not those whose hearts are stifled with hatred?

BLESS THEM THAT PERSECUTE YOU.
if our enemy cannot put up with us any longer and takes to cursing us,
our immediate reaction must be to lift up our hands and bless him.
our enemies are the blessed of the Lord.
their curse can do us no harm.
may their poverty be enriched with all the riches of God,
with the blessing of Him whom they seek to oppose in vain.
we are ready to endure their curses so long as
they redound to their blessing.

DO GOOD TO THEM THAT HATE YOU.
we must love not only in though and word, but in deed,
and there are opportunities of service in every circumstance of daily life.
'if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him to drink rom. 12.20
as brother stands by brother in distress,
binding up his wounds and soothing his pain,
so let us show our love towards our enemy.
there is no deeper distress to be found in the world,
no pain more bitter than our enemy's .
nowhere is service more necessary or more blessed
than when we serve our enemies.
'it is more blessed to give than to receive.'

PRAY FOR THEM WHICH DESPITEFULLY USE YOU..
this is the supreme demand,.
through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy,
stand by his side and plead for him to God.
Jesus does not promise that when we bless our enemies
and do good to them
they will not despitefully use and persecute us.
they certainly will.
but not even that can hurt or overcome us,
so long as we pray for them.
for if we pray for them, we are taking their distress and poverty,
their guilt and perdition upon ourselves and pleading to God for them.
we are doing vicariously for them what they cannot do
for themselves.
every insult they utter only serves to
bind us more closely to god and them.
their persecution of us only serves to bring them
nearer to reconciliation with God and to further triumphs of love.

how then does love conquer?
by asking not how the enemy treats here
but only how Jesus treated her.
the love for our enemies takes us along the way of the cross
and into fellowship with the crucified.
the more we are driven along this road,
the more certain is the victory of love over the enemy's hatred.
for then it is not the disciple's own love,
but the love of Jesus Christ alone,
who fro the sake of His enemies went to the cross
and prayed for them as He hung there.
in the face of the cross
the disciples realized that they too were His enemies
and that He had overcome them by His love.
it is this that opens the disciple's eyes
and enables him to see his enemy as a brother.
he knows that he owes his very life to one,
who though he was His enemy,
treated him as a brother  and accepted him,
who made him His neighbour, and
drew him into fellowship with Himself.
the disciple can now perceive that even his enemy is the
object of God's love,
and that he stands like himself
beneath the cross of Christ.
God asked us nothing about our virtues or our vices,
for in His sight even our virtue was ungodliness.
God's love sought out His enemies who needed it
and whom he deemed worthy of it.
God loves His enemies
-that is the glory of His love,
as every follower of Jesus knows;
through Jesus he has become a partaker in this love.
for god allows His sun to shine upon the just and the unjust..
but it is not only the earthly sun and the earthly rain:
the 'Sun of righteousness' and the rain of God's word
which are on the sinner,
and reveal the grace of the heavenly Father.
perfect,all-inclusive love is the act of the Father,
it is also the act of the sons of God.
as it was the act of the only begotten Son.

'this commandment, that we should love our enemies and forgo revenge
will grow even more urgent in the holy struggle which lies before us
and in which we partly have already been engaged for years.
in it love and hate engage in mortal combat.
it is the urgent duty of every christian soul to prepare itself for it.
the time is coming when the confession of the living God
will incur not only the hatred and the fury of the world,
for on the whole it has come to that already,
but complete ostracism from 'human society, as they call it.
the christians will be hounded from place to place,
subjected to physical assault, maltreatment and death of every kind.
we are approaching an age of widespread persecution.
therein lies the true significance of all the movements and conflicts
of our age.
our adversaries seek to root out the christian church and the christian faith
because they cannot live side by side with us,
because they see in every word we utter and every deed we do,
even when they are not specifically directed against them,
a condemnation.
indeed they must admit that it is utterly futile to condemn us.
we do not reciprocate their hatred and contention,
although they would like it better if we did
and so sink to their own level.
and how is the battle to be fought?
soon the time will come when we shall pray,
not as isolated individuals, but as a corporate body, a congregation,
a church:
we shall pray in multitudes (albeit in relatively small multitudes)
and among the thousands and thousands of apostates
we shall loudly praise and confess the lord who was crucified
and is risen and shall come again.
and what prayer, what confession, what hymn of praise will it be?
it will be the prayer of earnest love for these very sons of perdition
who stand around and gaze at us with eyes aflame with hatred
and who have perhaps  already raised their hands to kill us.
it will be a prayer for the peace of these
erring, devastated and bewildered souls,
a prayer for the same love and peace which we ourselves enjoy,
a prayer which will penetrate to the depths of their souls
and rend their hearts more grievously than anything they can do to us.
yes, the church which is really waiting for its Lord,
and which discerns the signs of the times of decision,
must fling itself with its utmost power and with the panoply of its holy life
into this prayer of love.'    a.f.c.vilmar, 1880

what is undivided love?
love which shows no special favour to those who love us in return.
when we love those who love us,
our brethren, our nation, our friends, yes and even our own congregation,
we are no better than the heathen and the publicans.
such love is ordinary and natural, and not distinctively christian.
we can love our kith and kin,
our fellow countrymen and our friends,
whether we are christians or not,
and there is no need for Jesus to teach us that.
but He takes that kind of love for granted
and in contrast asserts that we must love our enemies.
thus He shows us what he means by love
and the attitude we must display towards it.

how then do the disciples differ from the heathen?
what does it really mean to be a christian?
her we meet the word which controls the whole chapter
and sums up all we have heard so far.
what make the christian different from other men
is the 'peculiar', to perissov (greek),  the extraordinary',
the 'unusual', that which is not 'a matter of course'.
this is the quality whereby the better righteousness exceeds the
righteousness of the scribes and pharisees.
it is 'the more', the 'byond all that'.
the natural is to auto (one and the same)
for heathen and christian,
the distinctive quality of the christian life begins with the perisson.
it is this quality which first enables us to see the natural in its true light.
where it is lacking, the peculiar graces of christianity  are absent.
it cannot occur within the sphere of natural possibilities,
but only when they are transcended.
the perisson never merges into the to auto.
that was the fatal mistake of the false protestant ethic which
diluted christian love into patriotism,
loyalty to friends
and industriousness,
which in short,
perverted the better righteousness into justitia civilis.
not in such terms as these does Jesus speak.
for Him the hallmark of the Christian is the 'extraordinary'.
the christian cannot live at the world's level,
because he must always remember the perisson.

what is the precise nature of the perisson?
it is the life described in the beatitudes,
the life of the followers of Jesus,
the light which lights the world,
the city set on the hill,
the way of self renunciation
of utter love
of absolute purity,
truthfulness and
meekness.
it is unreserved love for our enemies.
for the unloving and the unloved,
love for our religious, political and personal adversaries.
in every case it is the love which was fulfilled in the cross of Christ.
what is the perisson?
it is the love of Jesus Christ Himself,
who went patiently and obediently to the cross
-it is in fact the cross itself.
the cross is the differential of the christian religion,
the power which enables the christian to transcend the world
and to win the victory.
the passio in the love of the crucified
is the supreme expression of
the 'extraorinary' quality  of the christian life.

the 'extraordinary' quality is undoubtedly identical with the light
that sines before men and for which they glorify
the Father which is in heaven.
it cannot be hidden under a bushel,
it must be seen of men.
the community of the followers of Jesus,
the community of the better righteousness,
is the visible community:
it has left the world and society
and counted everything but loss for the cross of Christ.

and how does this quality work out in practice?
the 'extraordinary'
-and this is the supreme scandal-
is something which the followers of Jesus DO.
it must be DONE like the better righteousness,
and done so that all men can see it.
it is not strict puritanism,
not some eccentric pattern of christian living,
but simple, unreflecting obedience to the will of Christ.
if we make the 'extraordinary' our standard,
we shall be led into the passio of Christ,
and in that its peculiar quality will be displayed.
this activity itself is ceaseless suffering.
IN IT THE DISCIPLE ENDURES THE SUFFERING OF CHRIST.
(note: so it this is true, then the 'agonize' of luke 13.24 may not deal with
TRYING to do what God tells me to do,
but rather is involved in the simple DOING of it....)
if this is not so, then this is not the activity of which Jesus speaks.

hence the perisson is the fulfilment of the law,
the keeping or the commandments.
in Christ crucified and in His people
the 'extraordinary' becomes reality.

these men are the perfect,
the men in whom the undivided love of the heavenly Father is perfected.
it was that love which gave the Son to die for us upon the cross
and it is by suffering in the fellowship of this cross
that the followers of Jesus are perfected.
the perfect are none other than the blessed of the beatitudes.

end







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