Episode Transcript  

One

The Final Beatitude

All the beatitudes are paradoxical. All celebrate things we might be naturally tempted to regard as misfortunes or defects: poverty, mourning, meekness, hunger, and thirst. But then Jesus winds up with the grand finale: and now the paradox, the strangeness of it all, reaches its peak. He says, “Blessed those who are persecuted in the cause of right: theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they reproach you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad.”

And yet, it all makes sense in a surprising sort of way. Because each of the beatitudes describes someone who is blessed, is fortunate, is happy, because they haven’t allowed anything to get in the way of their union with God. And perhaps the thing that blocks our union with God most is what other people think. So if we are willing to let other people persecute us, and speak ill of us, and look down on us, if none of that can distract or stymy us in our relentless progress towards God, then we can be exceedingly happy. Because nothing will be able to stop us.

Two

Why We Value Other People’s Opinions

Everybody is born with the instinct to care about what other people think. Sometimes you run into people who boast, “I don’t care what other people’s opinion of me is,” but actually, those people are always deluded. Study after study shows that we all care what others think, including those of us who pretend that we don’t. In fact, the people who say they don’t care about what other people think are showing that they do care. If they really didn’t care about how other people think of them, they wouldn’t go around bragging about how they don’t care, they wouldn’t even think about it. And the reason we care about what other people think of us is two-fold.

First, we all depend on other people. We all depend on society. Very few of us, if dropped naked into the wilderness, could survive on our own. And we certainly wouldn’t thrive. So if all depends on other people, that means we all depend, to some degree, on other people not being hostile to us. So we all want to be people-pleasers, at least to that extent.

Secondly, and more profoundly, we’re constantly trying to get some kind of objective confirmation that we have value. That we are special. That we are good. That we make the world a better place. And the more other people like us and express their affection and admiration, the more it feels that we’re getting multiple-source confirmation of our worth. We’re doing a constant scientific survey, and the more positive results come in, the more it feels like the hypothesis that we are good is being firmly established.

That’s why caring about what others think of us is one of the most fundamental of all human impulses. And it’s why it’s so wild for Jesus to say, “Lucky you when people hate you and turn on you for my sake.”

Three

The Limits of Human Praise

Human praise isn’t a bad thing. It’s good sometimes to get feedback from people. Feedback can help you know how you’re coming across, it can help you improve in certain skills and tasks, and it can help you figure out better ways to serve the people in your life. But human praise, human esteem, and good opinion aren’t ultimately enough. 

We’ve said we want the good opinion of those in society on whom we depend. But of course, no human society can give us everything or protect us from anything. Society can’t, at the end of the day, give us happiness. And society can’t, at the end of the day, save us from suffering and death. Only God can. 

We also said we want human praise as a kind of objective confirmation of our own goodness and value, and worth. But of course, other people’s opinions aren’t really objective. Praise sometimes corresponds to real excellence, but more often it doesn’t. What people value, and what society as a whole values, fluctuates and vacillates constantly. It’s a painfully unreliable indicator of real goodness, real excellence. No one but God can really know whether or not, in the grand scheme of things, we really made things better overall. Because only God can actually see the grand scheme. Only God sees the big picture. Only God can give us the direction and assurance to make the most of our lives. 

So, strive to please God, not people, only then is your life safe and full of worth. 

Four

Indifference

Jesus blesses those who are persecuted, mocked, or despised. In today’s pluralistic culture, open persecution is rare. Most people are too busy with their own lives to bother opposing our faith. Yet this beatitude still applies to us. Because often the hardest thing is not hostility but being ignored.

It’s hard when a spouse or child, someone we care deeply about, is totally indifferent to the thing we care most about, God and their salvation. Our culture doesn’t usually call committed Christians “evil.” It just thinks we’re dull, uncool, and irrelevant. Faithful marriages, quiet prayer, Mass on Sundays, reading Scripture, avoiding the race for fame or riches, all this looks ordinary, even boring. To the world, a simple life of fidelity seems uninspiring and cliché. That’s the real challenge of our age: not fiery persecution, but cold indifference.

Still, we can rejoice. Blessed are we when people dismiss us as uninteresting for living the Gospel. For our reward will be great in Heaven.

Five

What God Thinks

In the end, the only thing that matters is what God thinks of us. Because the real goal of life is to possess God in all his fullness and allow Him to transform you. And we know how to please God. We know how to make Him think well of our lives. Because He’s told us, in Christ Jesus, how He wants us to live and talk and act. 

So the best way to live this final beatitude, which celebrates our independence from human opinion, is to practice the presence of God. That means, to realize that God is at our side at all times. Hearing what we say. Watching what we do. Noticing what we’re looking at. 

The only way to be freed from the worry about what other people think is to really care about what God thinks. And the only way to care about what God thinks is to listen to Him in prayer at the start of the day and constantly throughout the day to be aware of His presence. Then you can start to live in a way that will please the One who is with you constantly. And then, with God as your companion and the one whom you do everything for, you will be supremely blessed. You will rejoice and be exceedingly glad.

Suggested Resolutions:

Choose one resolution for today to help you grow closer to God, or create your own. Here are some ideas to inspire you. 

• Set a reminder in a visible place around your house, your laptop, or your phone, that God is with you always, and the only thing that matters is what He thinks.

If you enjoyed this meditation, subscribe below.