The Seventh Beatitude

Extract

Rest is the final pattern of all that God has made. In time, in place, each thing has its own mode: it is created thus, and here and now. The singleness of sun and moon, of rock and flower and tiger; the separateness of men, each man a person unique and at last alone—here might seem a broken pattern, each thing good but each thing solitary. But on the seventh day of creation God rests. He blesses and sanctifies the day of his resting, and with it all that he has made: the whole creation is one in that ascription of praise to the creator of all.

The sabbath-rest of God is God’s contemplation of himself as creator: in it the unity and goodness of the things he has made are revealed. They are his: they are one in him. So, in the history of his chosen people, the seventh day came to be observed as a day of rest and gladness, a still point in the changing world for man to pause and remember. “See that thou keep my sabbath; because it is a sign between me and you in your generations: that you may know I am the Lord who sanctify you. ... It is an everlasting covenant between me and the children of Israel, and a perpetual sign. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and in the seventh he ceased from work.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” This is the seventh of the sayings of the Son of God in his sermon on the mount.