The Gift of Knowledge and Mourning

Blessed are they who mourn... Matthew 5:4

The Gift of Knowledge corresponds to the beatitude of those who mourn. The reason we mourn is that something inside us realizes that our programs for happiness, put together in early childhood, are not going to work anymore. This is one of the intuitive fruits of the Gift of Knowledge. It is the realization of the damage that our emotional programs have done to us throughout our lives up until now. Part of the mourning caused by the Gift of Knowledge is the beautiful grace called "tears of contrition."

Such contrition is also known as compunction. Compunction is the humble acknowledgement of our failures without any guilt feelings attached to them. If there are guild feelings attached to them, then they are coming from our own neuroses. When there is a feeling of loving sorrow for having damaged ourselves and others, these tears are cleansing. Hence the promise contained in the beatitude: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

Matthew 5:4 Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.

The Gift of Knowledge and Reality

Your face, Lord, do I seek. Psalm 27:8

There is a certain humbling character that the Gift of Knowledge imparts -- namely that we are basically prone to illusion and that our way of looking at life is not the only way and certainly not the most accurate. Such knowledge opens us, like the
opening of mind and heart that we pursue in centering prayer, to the reality of God just as God is...The Gift of Knowledge is an intuition into the fact that only God can satisfy our deepest longing for happiness...The Spirit of God in response to our centering prayer practice provides perspective for the energy that is channeled into...the daily frustration of our immoderate desires. The Spirit says to us: "You will never find happiness in any of your instinctual needs. They are only created things, and created things are designed to be stepping-stones to God, and not substitutes for God." The Spirit presents us with the true source of happiness, which is the experience of God as intimate and always present.

Psalm 27:8 "Come," my heart says, "seek his face!"