Today’s Gospel is about the Beatitudes, one of the most profound teachings by our Lord Jesus Christ as a means of having a closer relationship with our Divine Creator. The Beatitudes also has another title: “The Sermon on the Mount.” You can find it in your Bibles in Matt.5: 1-12.
“When he saw the crowds, [Jesus] went up the mountain, and after he had sat down his disciples came to him. 2 He began to teach them saying.
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven
4 Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted
5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.
6 Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied
7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy
8 Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God
9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called Children of God
10 Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me
11 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.”
I’m sure inside you, you maybe asking yourself … what should the Beatitudes mean to me? First of all, let me remind you that our Lord Jesus Christ never wrote anything when he was here on earth with us. But countless volumes are written about him and his teachings. Our Jesus only taught us one prayer and that is the Lord’s Prayer where he elevates us from mere mortals to be his brother when we pray the “Our Father” with him.
Hence the Beatitudes are handed down to us as a kind of blueprint or template for us who believe in God to gain eternal peace with the Lord. You can say that the Beatitudes are the Lord’s way of telling us what our personal attitude, as a Christian should be. It defines what should be our relationship to God. Hence every Catholic ought to know the Beatitudes by heart just like the way we are suppose to memorize the Ten Commandments or the Decalogue.
I don’t think that we have space enough here to deal with every thing that our Lord taught us in the Beatitudes. Let’s just deal with the most controversial, which is the first when the Lord said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” More often than not, this phrase has been analyzed a million times by priests, theologians and pastors where its real meaning gets twisted and relayed no longer from what the Lord wants us to hear, but rather from what man wants others to hear about this.
Things get out of hand when a priest or pastor says, “Blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Many have conveniently dropped “poor in spirit” because they are speaking before poor people and would like to see a connection or a link with God and the poor. There is no doubt that God loves the poor, which is why he allowed his only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ to come down from heaven and be born out of poor parents. If God so wished, Jesus could have been born out of Royalty. But clearly Jesus was allowed to be born with the poor as being poor really means you have nothing to brag about. Humility is one of the traits of a good Christian.
But in the Beatitudes, Being Poor in Spirit doesn’t mean you live a life of poverty or you are in the bottom line of the class level in human society. Rather it is being totally reliant on God that you do no longer rely on your own instincts, your own dead reckoning or your own intelligence. Rather you allow God to work his way into your daily life or your day-to-day living. You can consider yourself being “Poor in Spirit” when you have surrendered your live to the Lord.
In Matt. 6: 33 our Lord Jesus teaches us, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” Simply put, Give importance first to God and he will give you the rest. This could mean that when you wake up in the morning, even before you take that fresh smelling coffee, you should first thank God for the new day that awaits you and praise him for his glory or better, drop by the Blessed Sacrament for a short adoration and God will do the rest for your day.
The rest of the Beatitudes are simple to understand, like “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called Children of God.” Now can we say that the Communists are blessed because they are sitting on the peace table with the Philippine Government? I think not! If the Communists truly want peace, they should lay down their arms and stop killing innocent people or ambushing soldiers all in the name of their political ideology.
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