The Shocking Beatitudes

Sunday’s Gospel focused on the 8 beatitudes (Mt 5:1-10). They're the roadmap to attaining true happiness. “Blessed be” is another way of saying ‘objectively happy’, since happiness and holiness are the flip sides of human fulfillment. This understanding of happiness, which begins in this life and is completed in the next, comes from the inside out as a response to grace. Yet, it is more like Aristotle’s eudaimonia than modernity’s temporary pleasure. Since it is primarily spiritual, the beatitudes flip the world’s understanding of happiness on its head.

The world teaches us happiness comes through pride, apathy to others, assertiveness, chasing money, seeking vengeance, satisfying lust, wielding power, and avoiding controversy.

Jesus in the beatitudes, however, confounds His disciples by reversing their assumptions:

For pride He substitutes humility; for apathy, mourning; for assertiveness, meekness; for love of money, love of righteousness (truth and justice); for vengeance, mercy; for lust, purity of heart; for wielding power, peacemaking; and for avoiding controversy, standing on principle.

Not only does Jesus flip the script on fallen man’s idea of flourishing, but he also emphasizes that persecution experienced for following Him adds exponentially to true fulfillment:

“Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven” (Mt 5:11-12).

The beatitudes are part of the sermon on the mount, and are typological fulfillment of Moses on Sinai: Jesus is the new Moses, on the 'mount' that is the anti-type of Mount Sinai; and He clarifies the commandments that Moses received from God, showing us how holiness and happiness are one. They say that in our cynical times if the world will be converted it will be by saints rather than theologians. The world today needs more people following the beatitudes with joy and hope, and without apology.