The blessed of the Beatitudes is suggestive of natural fruitfulness; it stands related to the roses round my lawn, to the corn in yonder valleys and to the autumnal harvest of the orchard. It has to do with joys that arise spontaneously and inevitably from certain fixed conditions.It is the word Macaria, a name that was once given to the Island of Cyprus because that island was said to be so fertile as to be able to produce upon its own shores everything that its inhabitants could either require or desire. Such is the blessedness of the poor in spirit. The Kingdom of Heaven—the only true Macaria—is theirs; and, when they at last finish their long fight with self and sin, they shall inherit that happy land where all their chastened appetites shall be fully gratified and all their purified cravings be abundantly appeased.
Well may Sextus Rufus hint that Cyprus, the Isle of Macaria, famous for its fertility and wealth, presented a constant temptation to the Romans; they lusted to seize upon it and make so rich a prize their very own. The wonder is that the Kingdom of Heaven—the brighter, grander, fairer Macaria—does not entice all earth's knightliest spirits to venture along the lowly track that winds its way through the Valley of Humiliation in quest of such abounding and abiding felicity. Blessed are the lowly and the contrite, for the true Macaria shall be theirs!
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ It was the King of the Kingdom who said it; and, depend upon it, He knows the laws by which His happy subjects win their glorious victories and gain their glittering crowns.
F W Boreham, The Heavenly Octave (London: The Epworth Press, 1935), 23-24.
Dr Geoff Pound
Image: “Blessed are the poor.”