The beatitude of mourning, or the beatitude of the world?

At the beginning of His public life on the hill of the Beatitudes, Our Lord preached: "Blessed are they that mourn:  for they shall be comforted" (Matt. 5:5). At the end of His public life on the hill of Calvary, He found that blessed comfort: "Father, into your hands 
I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46).

Like all the other beatitudes, this beatitude of mourning is quite different from the beatitude of the world: "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die." The world never regards mourning as a blessing, but always as a curse. Laughter is the gold it is seeking, and sorrow is the enemy it flees.
 
It can no more understand the beatitude of mourning than it can understand the Cross. In fact, the modern man steels himself even against the suffering of another by wearing the mask of indifference, quite unmindful that such a thickening of his spiritual skin, though it may sometimes protect him from sorrow, nevertheless shuts in his own morbidity until it festers and corrupts.

But it must not be thought that the beatitude of Our Lord is either a condemnation of laughter and joy or a glorification of sorrow and tears.

The difference between the beatitude of the world, "Laugh and the world laughs with you," and the beatitude of Our Lord, "Blessed are they who mourn," is not that the world brings laughter and Our Lord brings tears. It is not even a choice of having or not having sadness; it is rather a choice of where we shall put it: at the beginning or at the end. In other words, which comes first: laughter or tears?

Shall we place our joys in time or in eternity, for we cannot have them in both. Shall we laugh on earth, or laugh in heaven, for we cannot laugh in both. Shall we mourn before we die or after we die, for we cannot mourn in both. We cannot have our reward both in heaven and on earth.

That is why we believe one of the most tragic words in the life of Our Lord is the word He will say to the worldly at the end of time: "You have already had your reward."

Which of the two roads, then, shall we take: the royal road of the Cross, which leads to the Resurrection and eternal life, or the road of selfishness, which leads to eternal death?

Excerpted and adapted from The Cries of Jesus from the Cross: An Anthology, by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (Sophia Institute Press, 2018), pp. 337-338.