text: Blessed Are Those Who Mourn - Christianity Today magazine - ChristianityTodayLibrary.com
  Blessed Are Those Who MournQuotations to stir heart and mind.Compiled by Richard A. KauffmanJuly 17, 2007BLESSED are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.Matthew 5:4
  "BLESSED are those who mourn" is, paradoxically, a more necessary message than "Rejoice in the Lord always," because there can be no true rejoicing until we have stopped running away from mourning.Simon Tugwell, The Beatitudes
  [W]E WILL NEVER experience the angel of comfort until we can enter into the mourning. … The admission of what is deepest within us can be done only with an angel of comfort. This angel comes to us in the appearance of a total stranger or an absolute friend.Michael H. Crosby, Spirituality of the Beatitudes
  [MOURNING] cannot be limited exclusively to expressing sorrow for one's sin … or grief surrounding death. … Rather, "those who mourn" has the more comprehensive sense of Isaiah 61:2-3, an inclusive grief that refers to the disenfranchised, contrite, and bereaved. It is an expression of the intense sense of loss, helplessness, and despair.Robert A. Guelich, The Sermon on the Mount
  THE DISCIPLES bear the suffering laid on them only by the power of him who bears all suffering on the Cross. As bearers of suffering, they stand in communion with the crucified. They stand as strangers in the power of him who was so alien to the world that it crucified him. This is their comfort, or rather, he is their comfort, their comforter. … This alien community is comforted by the Cross.Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship
  IN THIS BEATITUDE, Jesus praises … those who can enter into solidarity with the pain of the world and not try to extract themselves from it.Richard Rohr with John Bookser Feister, Jesus' Plan for a New World
  HE CALLS BLESSED even those who mourn. Their sorrow is of a special kind. He did not designate them simply as ...