Becoming God’s Cathedral
The Beauty of the Unfinished
A cathedral is not built overnight. It is a slow, intricate, lifelong process. Even prefabricated mobile homes (I live in a mobile home park) take up to six months to assemble and install on-site. If a simple home requires that much time, imagine the scope of transforming you into a character that displays His Majesty. God has a blueprint to build you into a cathedral, one that reflects His glory as demonstrated in the life and ministry of Jesus, and one that is supremely blissful because it bestows true contentment.
Sagrada Familia
Melissa Kirsch wrote in an op-ed: “When the architect Antoni Gaudí died at the age of 73 … the Sagrada Familia, the soaring basilica in Barcelona that he worked on for more than 40 years, was only fractionally complete. Construction has been continual and contentious over the intervening 100 years . . . , but in February, 2026 work on the central tower was completed, making it the tallest church in the world. But still, La Sagrada Familia is not complete, and construction will continue for years to come. This is as Gaudí expected; he did not intend for it to be finished in his lifetime. “My client is in no hurry,” he is reputed to have said. This kind of patience is essential when one is building cathedrals, but leaving things unfinished doesn’t jibe with our productivity-fixated culture. We’re our own clients, and we’re in spectacular hurry to get things done, to optimize and perfect and polish off so we can move on to the next. We like our projects shipped, our Apple Watch rings closed, our past relationships resolved
You are entering a construction zone—a lifelong process of spiritual formation that is deliberately designed, requires patient endurance, and will continue until your time is up. From my own experience of doing extensive rehabbing, I know there will be times when unexpected, hidden repairs will surface, and something you considered finished will have to be torn out and modified from scratch. So expect frustration as well as cuts and bruises, wear a hard hat and gloves.
The Cathedral to His glory, a metaphor for the unexpected bliss, (the serendipity described in a previous post), beckons us tantalizingly. But a bewildering pathway lies ahead.
The beatitudes then, through constant application, become like the operating system on a computer, the controlling force behind how I think, feel and act. At first it feels self consciously awkward, even artificial. Eventually it becomes entirely subconscious, the norm.
The first three are negative but essential to the development of the next four. They can be compared to the bull dozer clearing the building site.
Clearing the Rubble
We are not invited to sit in the pews and admire a magnificent stained glass window. For God intends for us to be participants and partakers of the promise, not mere observers. The way we participate is by entering and then, as our Roman Catholic friends visit the Station of the Cross in strict order, we here are required to visit each pillar in the order in which Jesus delineated them. Lleapfrogging them means the end result is unobtainable. I have paraphrased them and included the reward attendant on each one.
I mourn over this, I am aware that they cause God sorrow and are damaging to me and my environment;
The first three call for total honesty to the point of being painful. They are a descent into a canyon of self awareness:
I fess up to my shortcomings, before God I am a pauper;
and I am meek or transparent about them. I do not need to defend, rationalize or justify my failures. I fess up to my shortcomings, before God I am a pauper; I mourn over this, I am aware that they cause God sorrow and are damaging to me and my environment, and I am meek or transparent about them. I do not need to defend, rationalize or justify my failures.
Starting to Build
Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so the vacuum that those three create, longs to to be filled. Hungering and thirsting follow on as a consequence, the way a lost survivor is haunted by his deprivations, with a parched throat he constantly thinks of food and water.
Hungering and thirsting follow on as a consequence, the way a lost survivor is haunted by his deprivations, with a parched throat he constantly thinks of food and water.
Human Becomings
Or, to change the metaphor, the beatitudes are dynamic, like a sophisticated engine. The individual parts can be examined separately, but the engine can only function when they are assembled. And like an intricate engine, they must be assembled in the correct order. It would be nice to adopt the ones that we consider beneficial, say “Peacemaker”. But you cannot go leapfrogging over the preceding stepping stones because they provide the essential buildup, the necessary process to becoming a peacemaker. The conclusion is that we are not static in our development. We may be called human beings, but the beatitudes have a different take: we are human becomings. That points to the fact that the true state of blessedness, or of supreme contentment, is a gift, yet it requires a process in unwrapping and then enjoying the gift.
God’s OS – His Operating System
I resonate with Emil Brunner, who compared a follower of Jesus to a newly hatched chicken that has bits of egg shell persistently clinging to it. The older OS has a tendency to take over again. So that the honesty that the first three beatitudes require, remains an ongoing process. This honesty is the antidote to hypocrisy.
The fourth one starts the ascent. SE become single minded about serving God; that in turn makes us merciful in our dealings with others. Judgmentalism and self righteousness and a critical spirit are transformed into mercy. After all, recall that the pilgrims’ honest confrontation in the mirror revealed his own poverty. That self awareness leads us into a new awareness, and a growth into the character of Jesus as peacemakers, for, recall, if we could digitize the beatitudes and then produce a hologram from the data, the person so projected would be Jesus himself.
The Beatitudes are not Self Flagellation
So to reinforce the promise of supreme contentment there is a brief overview of the benefit attached to each promise. Those benefits point to the fact that the supreme contentedness, or bliss, is not pie in the sky by and by.
Here they are with the benefits highlighted:
As the operating system begins to function a transformation takes place and what begins to emerge is the beautiful character of Jesus. As this dynamic is followed, the pilgrim confronts his own sin and failings meekly and with mourning, hungers and thirsts for righteousness, and as a peacemaker, is satiated with the fullness of God.
Whenever you fail at some point, to use a Snakes and Ladders metaphor, you go back to the beginning: Acknowledge you are a pauper, mourn it, be meek or open about it, and follow your hunger to the feasting table that God spreads for the unworthy.
Shock
The last beatitudes comes as an uncomfortable surprise! Persecuted! aAnd Jesus adds salt tot he wound by adding: reviled! Just as Jesus himself faced these things, we must expect the same reaction. Hypocrites despise transparency, for it exposes them, so they attack it with ferocity.
You are not Alone
These promises of sublime contentment are the introduction to the sermon on the mount. And central to the sermon, the hinge upon which everything swings, is the Father as companion and mentor. Jesus uses the term “your Father” or “the Father” 17 times in the discourse. The provision, be it daily bread, protection from temptation, or the capacity to forgive is predicated on this relationship.
The resource for living this life is not found in self-improvement or rule-keeping, but in alignment with the Source Himself. The Sagrada Família—the Holy Family—opens its doors to us. Because Jesus is our Brother, He invites us into this household and points directly to the Father as an active partner in our journey.
The Essential Resource
In Matthew 7:7–11, Jesus provides the practical instruction for obtaining what we need:
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”
In the original language, these verbs are in the present continuous tense. A more accurate phrasing would be: “Ask, and keep on asking. Seek, and keep on seeking. Knock, and keep on knocking.” We are always hungry, and God is always providing.
If an earthly father knows how to give good gifts to his children, how much more attentive is our heavenly Father to those who ask, seek, and knock? He does not provide a roadmap for “doing it yourself.” He provides a roadmap for living in constant, dependent relationship with the Father—the sole source of every good thing required to live this life.
Cathedrals Under Construction
God is not building you into a house, however grand.
He is doing something far more splendid, a CATHEDRAL no less! And He is laboring beside you.
Next time:
The Truth Will Set You Free … … But First it Will Make You Miserable
So far:
2 Illusion https://progressingpeople.blog/2026/06/02/beatitude-profound-contentment/
Progressing People 
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