BEATITUDES

“The Beatitudes are at the heart of Jesus’ preaching” (CCC 1716). St. Matthew, whose Gospel is, among all the New Testament books, distinguished for its moral teaching, places the Beatitudes at the beginning of the Lord’s ministry.

In Matthew, Christ begins the Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes (Mt 5:3-12), granting them first place in that discourse in which Jesus’ moral message is most richly declared. Addressing his followers, he taught how great was the blessedness of those who were authentically his disciples. Those who lead such lives are indeed happy, and their reward will be great.
The scene Matthew draws reminds us of the scene in the Old Testament in which Moses, the chief spokesman for the Old Law, brings to the people from God the magnificent Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai (cf. Ex 34, 35). These commandments, the laws of liberty and of life, lie at the very center of the Mosaic covenant with God. The people are to keep these precepts in order to be truly God’s people and to deserve a promised land on earth, in which God will be their God and protector.

Christ’s Beatitudes are more sublime than the commandments. Here it is not merely a question of avoiding evil actions that are hostile to love and make peaceful life on earth impossible. Rather, the Beatitudes present a radically new vision. They call us to be new people living in new way; they invite us to live a life far more excellent than what the Decalogue requires. Those who live the Beatitudes are, already on earth, happy in the goodness and greatness of their lives, and are bearers of a better promise: They have secure confidence of possessing a better, entirely blessed homeland in heaven.

The eight Beatitudes are: (1) Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (2) Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. (3) Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. (4) Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. (5) Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. (6) Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (7) Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (8) Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Distinctiveness of the Beatitudes • The beatitude form is found often in Scripture (cf. Sir 25:7-11, Ps 1:1-2, Rv 22:7-14). A beatitude is the joyful declaration of an important moral truth: Blessed, truly happy, and excellent are those who live thus. Then there is a promise: Those who live so well shall surely receive a longed-for reward.
The eight Beatitudes of Our Lord praise those whose lives shine with the distinctive patterns of living that Christ exemplified and lived – forms of living that are patterns for living as his true disciples. These are the wisest and the best ways to live in this fallen and redeemed world.

In the fire of faith, hope, and love, aware of the existential conditions of the world, of the tragedy of sin, and of the saving mercy of God, the lives of those who live in this manner are different from lives praised by the great pagan moralists. The first disciples of Jesus knew that the actual world was not really understood by worldly minds; and we, too, cannot live an ordinary “sensible life.” Sinners living in a broken but redeemed world, we cannot live well without generous love. Having been forgiven and loved so much, we must not be ordinary competitors for goods and dignities, seeking to make ourselves happy while having only a decent respect for justice and moderation. We who have found Christ can find ourselves only in giving away what we have and are, shaping different visions of blessedness from the dreams of those who do not know the drama of salvation and divine mercy. There is a distinctive Christian way of living, and it is very good.

Aristotle praised justice and prudence, but he did not praise the poor and the humble. The poor in spirit whom Christ praises are those who have understood his poverty and no longer have a taste for deceptive riches or the praises of the world. They have realized that self-giving love is the richest form of living. To give away all one has, and is, means entering a blessed way of living like that of the Lord their teacher. Happy are they – already they taste the gladness of the kingdom of heaven that will be fully theirs.

The meek, too, are praised. Meekness points to the patience of the poor, a patience that marks strong and generous hearts. Christ declares that he himself was meek (Mt 11:29). He would not strike out against others to acquire what was not needed, when it was so necessary to stand witness in patient strength for what is important above all else.
To mourn as Christ mourned is also a blessed form of life. Tears shed not out of self-pity, but out of great love and compassion, shine in the splendor of the great caring and all-embracing love of the true disciple. The meek seek no more for themselves, because they already possess the longed-for land toward which they are journeying. Those who mourn are already comforted and know the time will come when God will wipe away the tears from every eye.

To hunger and thirst for justice is to have a blessed passion for justice and entire goodness of heart. The disciple does not see the goal of life as merely a balance between extremes, although there is a place for that. But the love that animates his longing for justice has another measure: loving beyond all measure. Such love is the form or soul of all Christian virtues. Those who thirst so much for what is altogether good in the presence of God shall surely be satisfied. Indeed, their very passion for justice makes their lives already blessed and excellent.

To be merciful is to be like the Lord, who has been merciful to us and saved us. The merciful see this broken world as it is, and know how much God loves those in need about us. Faith and love, grown strong in them, enable them to realize that to be faithful they must be far more than fair to others. Fairness would not have saved them; all need mercy to mount up to the greatness to which God calls each one. In showing mercy, they taste the blessedness of living the mercy God lives and know they shall have a mercy beyond all understanding.

The pure of heart shall see God. The pure of heart seek one thing; their hearts are not devious and divided and unhappy. The dishonest and pretended loves of the worldly are not theirs. With all their hearts they seek what is best: God, who is the perfect goodness their hearts were made for. They seek a God who is not far from us but dwells in every neighbor. In their singleness of heart, they see the Lord himself in all; and they know they shall see him face to face, with all those they have loved with pure love, and enter into God’s overwhelming joy.

The Lord’s greeting, “Peace be with you,” speaks of a peace that includes every blessing. The peacemakers are sources of every kind of peace. A good life needs to be at peace in the world, undisturbed by disorderly passions. It needs to have peace of mind and heart, peace with others and with God. Peace is shaped in homes and in neighborhoods, in cities and among nations. Those who make peace – the poor in spirit, the merciful, the pure of heart – are above all called sons of God. For they are like the incarnate Son of God, the first of peacemakers, who is himself our peace (Eph 2:14), having made peace possible for all by the blood of his cross (Col 1:20).

The persecuted seem to be tragic figures rather than blessed; they do what is right and are assailed because of their very goodness. But to suffer persecution here seems to signify much more than being made to taste pain. It suggests having such great love that one bears the cross gladly. One may recall the beautiful story of “Perfect Love” in the Little Flowers of Saint Francis. Above all the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, Francis of Assisi declares, is that of bearing the cross with overwhelming love, glad to be able to endure all for those one loves. Such is the magnificent love of Christ crucified; and blessed indeed are those who have a share in his saving love. With this last of the Beatitudes we return in a way to the first: Like the poor in spirit, the persecuted possess the kingdom of God.

The Universal Call to Holiness • The Beatitudes were not meant only for certain elite Christians. The patterns of life they present were meant to draw all toward the excellent forms of life for which human hearts, touched by grace, long. There is great attractiveness in the heroic and holy lives lived according to the Beatitudes (cf. Pope John Paul II, encyclical The Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, 16).
Reflection on the Beatitudes reminds us that Christian lives cannot settle peacefully into mediocrity. God takes every Christian seriously and calls each to greatness. All are called to the perfection of charity and the generosity of holy lives (CCC 2012-2014). Few may reach the heights of greatness that some of the disciples reached. But efforts to live according to the generosity of the Gospel are a great protection to grace and hope.

Disciples are to follow Christ and become like him – and it is their happiness to become like their Master. But Christ above all was poor. “Though he was rich he became poor for our sake” (2 Cor 8:9). Christ in infinite compassion wept over Jerusalem, at Lazarus’ tomb, and in his blessed Passion. Jesus thirsted for righteousness, longing with his whole heart that all might become holy. He above all others was meek and merciful; he was entirely pure in heart, and was the supreme peacemaker, for “he is himself our peace” (Eph 2:14). He is first among those bitterly persecuted: Beaten, scourged, mocked, crowned with thorns, he bore every kind of evil willingly and with burning love.

Thus the Beatitudes are first of all portraits of Christ himself (CCC 1717). They sketch the many facets of his infinite love. They point out, too, the ways in which Christ most wishes our lives to be like his. To be a Christian means being called to a life that is excellent and also truly happy. Christ repeats in every Beatitude that it is a great blessing and joy to live as he invites his friends to do. They will share his crosses and drink the cup he has drunk of; but their lives will be excellent and glad. For they will be leading the kind of life he lived. So great and good a life already gives the disciple an excellence almost beyond praise. It promises eternal life most securely.

Those who live in the excellent ways the Beatitudes commend – in poverty of spirit, as bearers of mercy and creators of peace – will be happy. Their happiness is, as we have seen, a happiness tasted already in this world, since the greatest joy in life is that of living a truly excellent life: one dear to God and a blessing to all men. To live according to the pattern by which the Lord himself lived on earth is the great joy of his disciples.
But an eternal reward also is promised for living so glad and excellent a life. While the first and eighth Beatitudes promise the kingdom of heaven, the others speak of the promised reward in different ways: The true disciples shall be comforted, shall inherit the earth, be entirely satisfied, obtain mercy, see God, be called sons of God. Most commentators agree that these are not different rewards but speak in various ways of the magnificent reward that surpasses all our hopes: the reward that will be ours when we enter the kingdom of God in all its fullness and see God face to face, so entering into his joy and sharing his blessed rest (CCC 1720).

Christian teachers have placed the Beatitudes at the heart of the Christian message since the first days of faith. They express the vocation of the faithful; they shed light on the attitudes characteristic of Christian life. They sustain hope in the midst of trials. They invite us to taste now something of the gladness of eternal life, knowing how many disciples, having happily lived the Beatitudes, have already entered its fullness (CCC 1717).

See: Evangelical Counsels; Hope; Kingdom of God; Law of Christ; Moral Principles, Christian; New Covenant; Ten Commandments; Theological Virtues.

Suggested Readings: CCC 541-550, 1023-1029; 1716-1729, 1820-1821. Vatican Council II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, Ch. V, “The Call to Holiness”; Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem, 4. John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, Libertatis Conscientia, 62. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 69. G. Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles, Ch. 26. P. Hinnebusch, O.P., “The Messianic Meaning of the Beatitudes,” The Bible Today, 59 (1972), pp. 707-717.

Ronald D. Lawler, O.F.M. Cap.




Russell Shaw. Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine. Copyright © 1997, Our Sunday Visitor.

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Last Updated: Sunday, April 01, 2001 03:24:19 PM