My Dear People,

The Beatitudes are new teachings Jesus gives to us and are different from the Commandments. The Beatitudes tell us what to do; how to be holy by having a pure heart, and what our hearts’ disposition should be. I will point out just some of the Beatitudes as there is not enough space to include all. 

First, we should recognize when Jesus went up on a mountain to teach, it is a Mosaic motif. Moses was the great teacher of Israel, and he climbed Mount Sinai to teach the law of God. Jesus is recapitulating this motif. Jesus, the new Moses, will teach a better law and correct some of the compromises that Moses introduced into Israel’s legislation. (Matt 5:21-48).

Now, with respect to the Beatitudes (which are just an introduction to the Sermon on the Mount and not synonymous with the entire Sermon, Matt 5-7), we should note that there are eight main ones, followed by an epilogue on persecution (vv. 11-12). The Beatitudes are about the kingdom of heaven.  Specifically, they are the virtues that are required of the kingdom citizens. 

Finally, we should note that the Beatitudes are not a simple grab-bag of random virtues, but there is a certain progression as we move through them. They are all interrelated, and to a certain extent they move from one to the next. 

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

The primary reference—poverty of spirit—is a recognition of one’s spiritual bankruptcy which needs to be filled with God’s spiritual riches; that is, His Spirit, granted by faith through the sacraments. Nonetheless there is a relationship with material poverty (material riches can be a great distraction to the spiritual life), sidetracking us to pursue goals other than following God. Elsewhere, Jesus will warn about seed that is choked by the “anxieties and riches and pleasures” of this world.  (Luke 8:14).

For this reason, many of the saints have understood “poor in spirit” to be “poor for the sake of the Spirit,” that is, temporarily poor for the sake of spiritual ends. Thus, those who go into religious life take a radical vow of poverty. But even laypeople should practice restraining material wealth. How do we practice it? The principle of St. Josemaria was “have nothing unnecessary.” He encouraged laypeople to pare their belongings down to what they really needed for their vocation, and then to take care of those things so that they would not constantly be wasting money by replacing them. Thus “poor in spirit” refers to spiritual poverty but nonetheless is tied to living a form of temporal poverty as well, because temporal indulgence is incompatible with spiritual poverty. 

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. This refers to those who mourn for their spiritual poverty, for their nothingness, emptiness, and for their sins. Thus, recognizing that you are “poor in spirit” leads to contrition (sorrow of sins), but that is good because God will comfort the contrite. 

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.  Meekness is roughly the same as humility. It is the virtue of  not putting oneself forward, not throwing your weight around, being docile. Citizens of the kingdom of heaven are meek or humble because they realize they are spiritually poor, that they really aren’t much, when considered by themselves without God’s grace. 

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom citizens who live the virtues of the Beatitudes will be hated by those who don’t want to give up their lustful ways because, first of all, the discipleship is a painful reminder to others that they are not following the way of God, and secondly the disciple becomes an impediment to others fulfilling their lusts because he will not cooperate.

Only in this way can we understand the hyperbolic venom and slander aimed at the pro-life movement. For example, legal protection of the lives of the unborn would mean persons in our society would have to restrain their sexuality (which is a form of lust of the flesh). Those who live chastely remind others of the dignity of the unborn child and are an unwelcome reminder and impediment to the rest of society in its pursuit of unrestrained indulgence in the lust of the flesh. Songs for, slander, dismissiveness, and other behaviors are expressed toward those who advocate for the unborn. 

And, nonetheless, persecution of Christians in most western nations still does not approach the kind of physical brutality Christians in Muslim and communist countries continue to experience. Waves of persecution come with a blessing, because it assists us in gaining detachment from the things of this world, thus helping us to live a life of spiritual poverty. So, persecution makes us poor, which brings us full circle to the first Beatitude: Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

Jesus, Son of David, came to reestablish the kingdom of the Lord on earth. But Jesus’s kingdom is an upside-down kingdom that calls good what the world calls bad, and bad what the world calls good. This Sunday’s readings call us to leave the ways of the world and practice the virtue of citizens of the kingdom, but also warns us this choice we make is to travel upstream against the current of our culture.

[Passages taken from Sunday Mass Readings for Year A by John Bergsma]

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Vincent Clemente