Digital Continent Digital Continent Easter 2017 | Page 62

through reverence for God, we consider only the needs of those on whom we bestow our
gratuitous bounty” (Ia IIae q.69 a3). Pope Innocent III and Dominic de Guzman had great care
for God’s children as they went about the business of righting the wrongs taking place in the
Church and in the south of France.
The next two beatitudes, those who are pure in heart and those who are peacemakers,
prepare God’s people for a life lived in contemplation and oneness in God. This is where God’s
created discern wisdom and love in knowing and being in the image of God.
Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better
than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but
also to the interests of others…Christ Jesus, who though he was in the
form of God…emptied himself taking the form of a servant…he humbled
himself and became obedient unto death, even death on the
cross…Therefore God has highly exalted him (Phil 2:3-9 RSV).
The heretics looked around their world and only saw evil. Evil brought into the world by the
malign god who created matter. Matter to be disdained in all forms. The final beatitude
“subsumes the others and confirms and demonstrates them,” 154 “Blessed are you when men
revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven” (RSV, Mt 5:11-12). Sanctified in Him
who is the prince of peace, the king of glory for all time, for all eternity, this is the fulfillment of
the “New or Evangelical Law.” 155
Fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding, had the Albigensians been able
to open the door to faith as found in God the Father, they would have been able to encounter
154
Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Pursuit of Happiness: God’s Way Living the Beatitudes. Trans. Sr. Mary Thomas
Nobel, O.P., (OR: Wipf and Stock, 1998),197.
155
Ibid., 196.