The Eight Beatitudes

The solemn blessings (beatitudines, benedictiones) which mark the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, the very first of Our Lord's sermons in the Gospel of St. Matthew (v, 3-10). Four of them occur again in a slightly different form in the Gospel of St. Luke (vi, 22), likewise at the beginning of a sermon, and running parallel to Matthew, 5-7, if not another version of the same. And here they are illustrated by the opposition of the four curses (24-26). The fuller account and the more prominent place given the Beatitudes in St. Matthew are quite in accordance with the scope and the tendency of the First Gospel, in which the spiritual character of the Messianic kingdom -- the paramount idea of the Beatitudes -- is consistently put forward, in sharp contrast with Jewish prejudices. The very peculiar form in which Our Lord proposed His blessings make them, perhaps, the only example of His sayings that may be styled poetical -- the parallelism of thought and expression, which is the most striking feature of Biblical poetry, being unmistakably clear.

As regards textual criticism, the passage offers no serious difficulty. Only in verse 9, the Vulgate and many other ancient authorities omit the pronoun autoi, ipsi; probably a merely accidental ommission. There is room, too, for serious critical doubt, whether verse 5 should not be placed before verse 4. Only the etymological connection, which in the original is supposed to have existed between the "poor" and the "meek", makes us prefer the order of the Vulgate.

The word poor seems to represent an Aramaic `ányâ (Hebr. `anî), bent down, afflicted, miserable, poor; while meek is rather a synonym from the same root, `ánwan (Hebr. `ánaw), bending oneself down, humble, meek, gentle. Some scholars would attach to the former word also the sense of humility; others think of "beggars before God" humbly acknowledging their need of Divine help. But the opposition of "rich" (Luke, vi, 24) points especially to the common and obvious meaning, which, however, ought not to be confined to economical need and distress, but may comprehend the whole of the painful condition of the poor: their low estate, their social dependence, their defenceless exposure to injustice from the rich and the mighty. Besides the Lord's blessing, the promise of the heavenly kingdom is not bestowed on the actual external condition of such poverty. The blessed ones are the poor "in spirit", who by their free will are ready to bear for God's sake this painful and humble condition, even though at present they be actually rich and happy; while on the other hand, the really poor man may fall short of this poverty "in spirit".

Inasmuch as poverty is a state of humble subjection, the "poor in spirit", come near to the "meek", the subject of the second blessing. The anawim, they who humbly and meekly bend themselves down before God and man, shall "inherit the land" and posses their inheritance in peace. This is a phrase taken from Ps. xxxvi (Hebr., xxxvii), 11, where it refers to the Promised Land of Israel, but here in the words of Christ, it is of course but a symbol of the Kingdom of Heaven, the spiritual realm of the Messiah. Not a few interpreters, however, understand "the earth". But they overlook the original meaning of Ps. xxxvi, 11, and unless, by a far-fetched expedient, they take the earth also to be a symbol of the Messianic kingdom, it will be hard to explain the possession of the earth in a satisfactory way.

The "mourning" in the Third Beatitude is in Luke (vi, 25) opposed to laughter and similar frivolous worldly joy. Motives of mourning are not to be drawn from the miseries of a life of poverty, abjection, and subjection, which are the very blessings of verse 3, but rather from those miseries from which the pious man is suffering in himself and in others, and most of all the tremendous might of evil throughout the world. To such mourners the Lord Jesus carries the comfort of the heavenly kindgom, "the consolation of Israel" (Luke, ii, 25) foretold by the prophets, and especially by the Book of Consolation of Isaias (xi-lxvi). Even the later Jews knew the Messiah by the name of Menahhem, Consoler. These three blessings, poverty, abjection, and subjection are a commendation of what nowadays are called the passive virtues: abstinence and endurace, and the Eighth Beatitude (verse 10) leads us back again to the teaching.

The others, however, demand a more active behaviour. First of all, "hunger and thirst" after justice: a strong and continuous desire of progress in religious and moral perfection, the reward of which will be the very fulfilment of the desire, the continuous growth in holiness.

From this interior desire a further step should be taken to acting to the works of "mercy", corporal and spiritual. Through these the merciful will obtain the Divine mercy of the Messianic kingdom, in this life and in the final judgment. The wonderful fertility of the Church in works and institutions of corporal and spiritual mercy of every kind shows the prophetical sense, not to say the creative poer, of this simple word of the Divine Teacher.

According to biblical terminology, "cleanness of heart" (verse 8) cannot exclusively be found in interior chastity, nor even, as many scholars propose, in a genral purity of conscience, as opposed to the Levitical, or legal, purity required by the Scribes and Pharisees. At least the proper place of such a blessing does not seem to be between mercy (verse 7) and peacemaking (verse 9), nor after the apparently more far-reaching virtue of hunger and thirst after justice. But frequently in the Old and New Testaments (Gen., xx, 5; Job, xxxiii, 3; Pss., xxiii (Hebr., xxiv), 4; lxxii (Hebr., lxxiii), 1; I Tim,i.5; II Tim, ii, 22) the "pure heart" is the simple and sincere good intention, the "single eye" of Matt., vi, 22, and thus opposed to the unavowed by-ends of the Pharisees (Matt., vi, 1-6, 16-18; vii, 15; xxiii, 5-7, 14) This "single eye" or "pure heart" is most of all required in the works of mercy (verse 7) and zeal (verse 9) in behalf of one's neighbor. And it stands to reason that the blessing, promised to this continuous looking for God's glory, should consist of the supernatural "seeing" of God Himself, the last aim and end of the heavely kingdom in its completion.

The "peacemakers" (verse 9) are those who not only live in peace with others but moreover do their best to preserve peace and friendship among mankind and between God and man, and to restore it when it has been disturbed. It is on account of this godly work, "an imitating of God's love of man" as St. Gregory of Nyssa styles it, that they shall be called the sons of god, "children of your Father who is in heaven" (Matt., v, 45).

When after all this the pious disciples of Christ are repaid with ingratitude and even "persecution" (verse 10) it will be but a new blessing, "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

So, by an inclusion, not uncommon in biblical poetry, the last blessing goes back to the first and the second. The pious, whose sentiments and desires whose works and sufferings are held up before us, shall be blessed and happy by their share in the Messianic kingdom, here and hereafter. And viewed in the intermediate verses seem to express, in partial images of the one endless beatitude, the same possession of the Messianic salvation. The eight conditions required constitute the fundamental law of the kingdom, the very pith and marrow of Christian perfection. For its depth and breadth of thought, and its practical bearing on Christian life, the passage may be put on a level with the Decalogue in the Old, and the Lord's Prayer in the New Testament, and it surpassed both in its poetical beauty of structure.

Besides the commentaries on St. Matthew and St. Luke, and the monographs on the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes are treated in eight homilies of ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA, P.G., XLIV, 1193-1302, and in one other of ST. CHROMATIUS, P.L., XX, 323-328. Different partristical sermons on single beatitudes are noticed in P.L.., CXXI (Index IV) 23 sqq.

Here is the commentary on the Gospel from Luke today.

Gospel:The Beatitudes and the Curses

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Commentary:

20-49. These thirty verses of St. Luke correspond to some extent to the Sermon on the Mount, an extensive account of which St. Matthew gives us in Chapters 5 to 7 in his Gospel. It is very likely that in the course of His public ministry in different regions and towns of Israel Jesus preached the same things, using different words on different occasions. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit each evangelist would have chosen to report those things which he considered most useful for the instruction of his immediate readers--Christians of Jewish origin in the case of Matthew, Gentile converts in the case of Luke. There is no reason why one evangelist should not have selected certain items and another different ones, depending on his readership, or why one should not have laid special stress on some subjects and shortened or omitted accounts of others.

In this present discourse, we might distinguish three parts--the Beatitudes and the curses (6:20-26); love of one's enemies (6:27-38); and teaching on uprightness of heart (6:39-49).

Some Christians may find it difficult to grasp the need of practising the moral teaching of the Gospel so radically, in particular Christ's teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is very demanding in what He says, but He is saying it to everyone, and not just to His Apostles or to those disciples who followed Him closely. We are told expressly that "when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at His teaching" (Matthew 7:28). It is quite clear that the Master calls everyone to holiness, making no distinction of state-in-life, race or personal circumstances. This teaching on the universal call to holiness was a central point of the teaching of (Blessed) Monsignor Escriva de Balaguer. The Second Vatican Council expressed the same teaching with the full weight of its authority: everyone is called to Christian holiness; consider, for example, just one reference it makes, in "Lumen Gentium", 11: "Strengthened by so many and such great means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state--though each in his or her own way--are called by the Lord to that perfection of sanctity by which the Father Himself is perfect."

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is not proposing an unattainable ideal, useful though that might be to make us feel humble in the light of our inability to reach it. No. Christian teaching in this regard is quite clear: what Christ commands, He commands in order to have us do what He says. Along with His commandment comes grace to enable us to fulfill it. Therefore, every Christian is capable of practising the moral teaching of Christ and of attaining the full height of his calling--holiness--not by his own efforts alone but by means of the grace which Christ has won for us, and with the abiding help of the means of sanctification which He left to His Church. "If anyone plead human weakness to excuse Himself for not loving God, it should be explained that He who demands our love pours into our hearts by the Holy Spirit the fervor of His love, and this good Spirit our Heavenly Father gives to those that ask Him. With reason, therefore, did St. Augustine pray: `Give Me what Thou command, and command what You please.' As, then, God is ever ready to help us, especially since the death of Christ our Lord, by which the prince of this world was cast out, there is no reason why anyone should be disheartened by the difficulty of the undertaking. To him who loves, nothing is difficult" ("St. Pius V Catechism", III, 1, 7).

20-26. The eight Beatitudes which St. Matthew gives (5:3-12) are summed up in four by St. Luke, but with four opposite curses. We can say, with St. Ambrose, that Matthew's eight are included in Luke's four (cf. "Expositio Evangelii Sec. Lucam, in loc."). In St. Luke they are in some cases stated in a more incisive, more direct form than in the First Gospel, where they are given with more explanation: for example, the first beatitude says simply "Blessed are you poor", whereas in Matthew we read, "Blessed are the poor in spirit", which contains a brief explanation of the virtue of poverty.

20. "The ordinary Christian has to reconcile two aspects of this life that can at first seem contradictory. There is on the one hand "true poverty", which is obvious and tangible and made up of definite things. This poverty should be an expression of faith in God and a sign that the heart is not satisfied with created things and aspires to the Creator; that it wants to be filled with love of God so as to be able to give this same love to everyone. On the other hand, an ordinary Christian is and wants to be "one more among his fellow men", sharing their way of life, their joys and happiness; working with them, loving the world and all the good things that exist in it; using all created things to solve the problems of human life and to establish a spiritual and material environment which will foster personal and social development [...].

"To my way of thinking the best examples of poverty are those mothers and fathers of large and poor families who spend their lives for their children and who with their effort and constancy--often without complaining of their needs--bring up their family, creating a cheerful home in which everyone learns to love, to serve and to work" ([Blessed] J. Escriva, "Conversations", 110f).

24-26. Our Lord here condemns four things: avarice and attachment to the things of the world; excessive care of the body, gluttony; empty-headed joy and general self-indulgence; flattery, and disordered desire for human glory--four very common vices which a Christian needs to be on guard against.

24. In the same kind of way as in verse 20, which refers to the poor in the sense of those who love poverty, seeking to please God better, so in this verse the "rich" are to be understood as those who strive to accumulate possessions heedless of whether or not they are doing so lawfully, and who seek their happiness in those possessions, as if they were their ultimate goal. But people who inherit wealth or acquire it through honest work can be really poor provided they are detached from these things and are led by that detachment to use them to help others, as God inspires them. We can find in Sacred Scriptures a number of people to whom the beatitude of the poor can be applied although they possessed considerable wealth--Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David, Job, for example.

As early as St. Augustine's time there were people who failed to understand poverty and riches properly: they reasoned as follows: The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the poor, the Lazaruses of this world, the hungry; all the rich are bad, like this rich man here. This sort of thinking led St. Augustine to explain the deep meaning of wealth and poverty according to the spirit of the Gospel: "Listen, poor man, to my comments on your words. When you refer to yourself as Lazarus, that holy man covered with wounds, I am afraid your pride makes you describe yourself incorrectly. Do not despise rich men who are merciful, who are humble: or, to put it briefly, do not despise poor rich men. Oh, poor man, be poor yourself; poor, that is, humble [...]. Listen to me, then. Be truly poor, be devout, be humble; if you glory in your ragged and ulcerous poverty, if you glory in likening yourself to that beggar lying outside the rich man's house, then you are only noticing his poverty, and nothing else. What should I notice you ask? Read the Scriptures and you will understand what I mean. Lazarus was poor, but he to whose bosom he was brought was rich. `It came to pass, it is written, that the poor man died and he was brought by the angels to Abraham's bosom.' To where? To Abraham's bosom, or let us say, to that mysterious place where Abraham was resting. Read [...] and remember that Abraham was a very wealthy man when he was on earth: he had abundance of money, a large family, flocks, land; yet that rich man was poor, because he was humble. `Abraham believed God and he was reckoned righteous.' [...] He was faithful, he did good, received the commandment to offer his son in sacrifice, and he did not refuse to offer what he had received to Him from whom he had received it. He was approved in God's sight and set before us as an example of faith" ("Sermon", 14).

To sum up: poverty does not consist in something purely external, in having or not having material goods, but in something that goes far deeper, affecting a person's heart and soul; it consists in having a humble attitude to God, in being devout, in having total faith. If a Christian has these virtues and also has an abundance of material possessions, he should be detached from his wealth and act charitably towards others and thus be pleasing to God. On the other hand, if someone is not well-off he is not justified in God's sight on that account, if he fails to strive to acquire those virtues in which true poverty consists.
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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland.

From: Matthew 5:1-12a

The Beatitudes

[1] Seeing the crowds, He (Jesus) went up on the mountain, and when He
sat down His disciples came to Him. [2] And He opened His mouth and
taught them, saying: [3] "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is
the Kingdom of Heaven. [4] Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall
be comforted. [5] Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the
earth. [6] Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied. [7] Blessed are the merciful, for they
shall obtain mercy. [8] Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall
see God. [9] Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called
children of God. [10] Blessed are those who are persecuted for
righteousness' sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. [11] Blessed
are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of
evil against you falsely on My account. [12] Rejoice and be glad, for
your reward is great in Heaven."

Commentary:

1. The Discourse, or Sermon, on the Mount takes up three full chapters
of St. Matthew's Gospel--Chapters 5-7. It is the first of the five
great discourses of Jesus which appear in this Gospel and it contains a
considerable amount of our Lord's teaching.

It is difficult to reduce this discourse to one single theme, but the
various teachings it contains could be said to deal with these five
points: 1) the attitude a person must have for entering the Kingdom of
Heaven (the Beatitudes, the salt of the earth, the light of the world,
Jesus and His teaching, the fullness of the Law); 2) uprightness of
intention in religious practice (here the "Our Father" would be
included); 3) trust in God's fatherly providence; 4) how God's children
should behave towards one another (not judging one's neighbor, respect
for holy things, the effectiveness of prayer, and the golden rule of
charity); 5) the conditions for entering the Kingdom (the narrow gate,
false prophets and building on rock).

"He taught them": this refers both to the disciples and to the
multitude, as can be seen at the end of the Sermon (Matthew 7:28).

2. The Beatitudes (5:3-12) form, as it were, the gateway to the Sermon
on the Mount. In order to understand the Beatitudes properly, we
should bear in mind that they do not promise salvation only to the
particular kinds of people listed here: they cover everyone whose
religious dispositions and moral conduct meet the demands which Jesus
lays down. In other words, the poor in spirit, the meek, those who
mourn, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful,
the pure in heart, the peacemakers and those who suffer persecution in
their search for holiness--these are not different people or kinds of
people but different demands made on everyone who wants to be a
disciple of Christ.

Similarly, salvation is not being promised to different groups in
society but to everyone, no matter what his or her position in life,
who strives to follow the spirit and to meet the demands contained in
the Beatitudes.

All the Beatitudes have an eschatological meaning, that is, they
promise us definitive salvation not in this world, but in the next.
But the spirit of the Beatitudes does give us, in this life, peace in
the midst of tribulation. The Beatitudes imply a completely new
approach, quite at odds with the usual way man evaluates things: they
rule out any kind of pharisaical religiosity, which regards earthly
happiness as a blessing from God and a reward for good behavior, and
unhappiness and misfortune as a form of punishment. In all ages the
Beatitudes put spiritual goods on a much higher plane than material
possessions. The healthy and the sick, the powerful and the weak, the
rich and the poor--all are called, independently of their
circumstances, to the deep happiness that is experienced by those who
live up to the Beatitudes which Jesus teaches.

The Beatitudes do not, of course, contain the entire teaching of the
Gospel, but they do contain, in embryo, the whole program of Christian
perfection.

3. This text outlines the connection between poverty and the soul.
This religious concept of poverty was deeply rooted in the Old
Testament (cf., e.g., Zephaniah 2:3ff). It was more to do with a
religious attitude of neediness and of humility towards God than with
material poverty: that person is poor who has recourse to God without
relying on his own merits and who trusts in God's mercy to be saved.
This religious attitude of poverty is closely related to what is called
"spiritual childhood". A Christian sees himself as a little child in
the presence of God, a child who owns nothing: everything he has comes
from God and belongs to God. Certainly, spiritual poverty, that is,
Christian poverty, means one must be detached from material things and
practice austerity in using them. God asks certain
people--religious--to be legally detached from ownership and thereby
bear witness to others of the transitoriness of earthly things.

4. "Those who mourn": here our Lord is saying that those are blessed
who suffer from any kind of affliction--particularly those who are
genuinely sorry for they sins, or are pained by the offenses which
others offer God, and who bear their suffering with love and in a
spirit of atonement.

"You are crying? Don't be ashamed of it. Yes, cry: men also cry like
you, when they are alone and before God. Each night, says King David,
I soak my bed with tears. With those tears, those burning manly tears,
you can purify your past and supernaturalize your present life"
([St] J. Escriva, "The Way", 216).

The Spirit of God will console with peace and joy, even in this life,
those who weep for their sins, and later will give them a share in the
fullness of happiness and glory in Heaven: these are the blessed.

5. "The meek": those who patiently suffer unjust persecution; those who
remain serene, humble and steadfast in adversity, and do not give way
to resentment or discouragement. The virtue of meekness is very
necessary in the Christian life. Usually irritableness, which is very
common, stems from a lack of humility and interior peace.

"The earth": this is usually understood as meaning our Heavenly
Fatherland.

6. The notion of righteousness (or justice) in Holy Scripture is an
essentially religious one (cf. notes on Matthew 1:19 and 3:15; Romans
1:17; 1:18-32; 3:21-22 and 24). A righteous person is one who
sincerely strives to do the Will of God, which is discovered in the
commandments, in one's duties of state in life (social, professional
and family responsibilities) and through one's life of prayer. Thus,
righteousness, in the language of the Bible, is the same as what
nowadays is usually called "holiness" (1 John 2:29; 3:7-10; Revelation
22:11; Genesis 15:6; Deuteronomy 9:4).

As St. Jerome comments ("Comm. on Matthew", 5, 6), in the fourth
Beatitude our Lord is asking us not simply to have a vague desire for
righteousness: we should hunger and thirst for it, that is, we should
love and strive earnestly to seek what makes a man righteous in God's
eyes. A person who genuinely wants to attain Christian holiness should
love the means which the Church, the universal vehicle of salvation,
offers all men and teaches them to use--frequent use of the Sacraments,
an intimate relationship with God in prayer, a valiant effort to meet
one's social, professional and family responsibilities.

7. Mercy is not a just a matter of giving alms to the poor but also of
being understanding towards other people's defects, overlooking them,
helping them cope with them and loving them despite whatever defects
they may have. Being merciful also means rejoicing and suffering with
other people.

8. Christ teaches us that the source of the quality of human acts lies
in the heart, that is, in a man's soul, in the depths of his spirit.
"When we speak of a person's heart, we refer not just to his
sentiments, but to the whole person in his loving dealings with
others. In order to help us understand divine things, Scripture uses
the expression `heart' in its full human meaning, as the summary and
source, expression and ultimate basis, of one's thoughts, words and
actions. A man is worth what his heart is worth" ([St] J. Escriva, "Christ
Is Passing By", 164).

Cleanness of heart is a gift of God, which expresses itself in a
capacity to love, in having an upright and pure attitude to everything
noble. As St. Paul says, "whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is
gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of
praise, think about these things" (Philippians 4:8). Helped by God's
grace, a Christian should constantly strive to cleanse his heart and
acquire this purity, whose reward is the vision of God.

9. The translation "peacemakers" well convey the active meaning of the
original text--those who foster peace, in themselves and in others and,
as a basis for that, try to be reconciled and to reconcile others with
God. Being at peace with God is the cause and effect of every kind of
peace. Any peace on earth not based on this divine peace would be vain
and misleading.

"They shall be called sons of God": this is an Hebraicism often found
in Sacred Scripture; it is the same as saying "they will be sons of
God". St. John's first letter (3:1) provides a correct exegesis of
this Beatitude: "See what love the Father has given us, that we should
be called children of God; and so we are".

10. What this Beatitude means, then, is: blessed are those who are
persecuted because they are holy, or because they are striving to be
holy, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Thus, blessed is he who suffers persecution for being true to Jesus
Christ and who does so not only patiently but joyfully. Circumstances
arise in a Christian's life that call for heroism--where no compromise
is admissible: either one stays true to Jesus Christ whatever the cost
in terms of reputation, life or possessions, or one denies Him. St.
Bernard ("Sermon on the Feast of All Saints") says that the eighth
Beatitude is as it were the prerogative of Christian martyrs. Every
Christian who is faithful to Jesus' teaching is in fact a "martyr" (a
witness) who reflects or acts according with this Beatitude, even if he
does not undergo physical death.

11-12. The Beatitudes are the conditions Jesus lays down for entering
the Kingdom of Heaven. This verse, in a way summing up the preceding
ones, is an invitation to everyone to put this teaching into practice.
The Christian life, then, is no easy matter, but it is worthwhile,
given the reward that Jesus promises.

Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text
taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries
made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of
Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock,
Co. Dublin, Ireland.

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