Often, Christians hearing the beatitudes despair of ever living up to them. Also, couples heading to divorce also despair of reconciling with each other. You know what, there is hope in both cases.
First about marriage and divorce. Doctor John Gottman, a marriage and social psychologist in Seattle is the world’s leading expert on marriage reconciliation. He has succeeded in bringing thousands of couples back from the brink of divorce. He can meet a couple for the first time and in one hour he can predict, with 95%-plus accuracy if they’ll be divorced in three years. What he’s looking for in the session is eye rolling, sarcasm, derision, and other physical signs of contempt, like saying “Ugh.” That means, “What you’ve said is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” which is a sign of dismissiveness. It says you’re worthless, what you think is worthless, and that is doing deep harm to the other person.
Here is the good news he comes up with. He finds that most couples who are talking about getting divorced still love each other. The problem is they’re unwittingly acting like they hate the other person through these signs of contempt. What he has to do is re-engineer the way that they talk to each other. His solution is called the ‘five-to-one rule.’ When a couple can’t get along, they are usually very late in the relationship and they can’t think of anything loving to say about the other person. He reminds them of when they were first in love and they couldn’t think of any criticisms. “She’s beautiful, she’s funny, she’s smart, she’s nice.” But when the couple is about to break up it’s, “She’s late all the time, and she’s mean to me, and I think she hates me.”
What Doctor Gottman does to re-engineer their communication is have the couple carry around two notebooks. When they want to lay into each other--to say something sarcastic, bitter or negative--they write it down. Then he tells them, they have to say five nice things first. That’s the five-to-one rule.
If you are like me and struggle with living up to the Beatitudes, It’s helpful to discover that the secret subject of the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus. It is clear that he is the one who is poor in spirit, who mourns, who is meek, who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, who is merciful. He is pure of heart, a peacemaker, persecuted for righteousness ‘sake. He lives all the sayings of the Sermon on the Mount. And he calls us to follow him in living them with his help in our families in our careers, in all our relationships. This is his eight to zero rule.
- Father Willy's inspirational homily was recorded live this morning during Mass at the Father Peyton Center. Please view the video on our Facebook page. (You don't need a Facebook account to view.)
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