"Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted."
This is the second beatitude. For some reason, I'm reminded of what is basically the opposite phrase, "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints." This old adage always struck me as 1) a veiled justification for being satisfied with a mediocre life, and 2) inaccurate.
And it's inaccuracy is itself twofold. First it distinguishes saints from sinners. WIth the exception of one Saint, Jesus' Mother, saints are sinners. There is no flesh and blood saint alive today who is not keenly aware of his own sinfulness. That is why he mourns in the first place.
Saints do not mourn because of their lack of fortune. As we know from the first beatitude, lack of fortune, or "poverty," is in the spiritual sense a good thing. What saints mourn is our brokenness beause of sin, and the brokenness of this world because of death. "They who mourn" are simply those who recognize the stain of sin on their hearts, and that they and their loved ones are destined for a death that was not intended. Jesus Himself mourned at this reality.
Acknowledging our brokenness is quite different from recognizing that without God we are nothing. Adam knew that he was nothing without God before he sinned for the first time. In fact, he probably recognized his nothingness without God better before his fall than afterward.
It is because of sin and death that we mourn, and we are "blessed" when we do because it is better to acknowledge an undeniable truth -- even if it upsets us -- than to ignore it for the sake of keeping up a pretentious smily face.
There are two kinds of happiness in the world: the happiness that comes from constantly trying to forget about the difficult realities that deep down we know we can't escape, like knowing we will die someday; and the happiness that comes from acknowledging it, and then finding that when we acknowledge, we find a deeper comfort than we could ever have had otherwise. It's the comfort that comes from Jesus. By acknowledging our brokenness, we open ourselves up to the comfort of His healing power. But we have to mournfully acknowledge it, like a patient who goes to see a doctor. If the patient refuses to admit that he is dying of cancer, he will continue to sleep with cigarettes in his mouth and refuse chemotherapy. And he will die. If he acknowledges his brokenness, then there is a shot that he will be fixed.
This is the other big confusion about "laughing with sinners." Under which of the above circumstances is the patient likely to laugh more sincerely for a longer time? Not if he refuses to acknowledge the problem. In that case he likely to suffer longer, and more needlessly. It is the man who gets treatment who has more chance to live an exciting and fulfilling life. In the same way, one who "mourns" is not destined to spend the rest of his days crying.
The comfort of God is what gives us our greatest capacity for joy and laughter. Saints aren't just a bunch of old people who sit around crying all day. Having met a couple of living saints, what I can say about all of them is that they are full of life. They have a tremendous capacity for joy and laughter, far more than the cynic who dismisses a life of honor and virtue because he would rather laugh dishonestly for the rest of his life than cry honestly for a short time and laugh for eternity.
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