Blessed Are Those Who Mourn.

They that mourn are happy (Matthew 5:4) Blessed are they that mourn. This is another strange blessing, and fitly follows the former. The poor are accustomed to mourn, the graciously poor mourn graciously. We are apt to think, Blessed are the merry but Christ, who was himself a great mourner, says, Blessed are the mourners. There is a sinful mourning, which is an enemy to blessedness--the sorrow of the world despairing melancholy upon a spiritual account, and disconsolate grief upon a temporal account. There is a natural mourning, which may prove a friend to blessedness, by the grace of God working with it, and sanctifying the afflictions to us, for which we mourn. But there is a gracious mourning, which qualifies for blessedness, an habitual seriousness, the mind mortified to mirth, and an actual sorrow.

A penitential mourning for our own sins this is godly sorrow, a sorrow according to God sorrow for sin, with an eye to Christ, Zechariah 12:10. Those are God's mourners, who live a life of repentance, who lament the corruption of their nature, and their many actual transgressions, and God's withdrawings from them and who, out of regard to God's honour, mourn also for the sins of others, and sigh and cry for their abominations, Ezekiel 9:4. 2. A sympathizing mourning for the afflictions of others the mourning of those who weep with them that weep, are sorrowful for the solemn assemblies, for the desolations of Zion (Zephaniah 3:18; Psalm 137:1), especially who look with compassion on perishing souls, and weep over them, as Christ over Jerusalem.

Now these gracious mourners are blessed. As in vain and sinful laughter the heart is sorrowful, so in gracious mourning the heart has a serious joy, a secret satisfaction, which a stranger does not intermeddle with. They are blessed, for they are like the Lord Jesus, who was a man of sorrows, and of whom we never read that he laughed, but often that he wept. The are armed against the many temptations that attend vain mirth, and are prepared for the comforts of a sealed pardon and a settled peace.

They shall be comforted. Though perhaps they are not immediately comforted, yet plentiful provision is made for their comfort light is sown for them and in heaven, it is certain, they shall be comforted, as Lazarus, Luke 16:25. Note, The happiness of heaven consists in being perfectly and eternally comforted, and in the wiping away of all tears from their eyes. It is the joy of our Lord a fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore which will be doubly sweet to those who have been prepared for them by this godly sorrow. Heaven will be a heaven indeed to those who go mourning thither it will be a harvest of joy, the return of a seed-time of tears (Psalm 126:5,6) a mountain of joy, to which our way lies through a vale of tears. See Isaiah 66:10. - Matthew Henry