Beautiful and inspiring as they are the beatitudes are one of the most challenging texts in Scripture. They turn all our expectations of life on their heads. They detail the whole range of human experience. We all know the experience of mourning and weeping. We all experience poverty of some sort, whether physical, spiritual or emotional. We all know hunger in some way, whether that’s physical hunger or an inner spiritual hunger. We have all been mocked, excluded and derided.
When caught up in the experience of these things our first thought is not likely to be that we are blessed. The challenge of the beatitudes is that the things Jesus calls blessed we tend to see as, at best, misfortune:
“Happy are you when people hate you, drive you out, abuse you, denounce your name as criminal, on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice when that day comes and dance for joy, for then your reward will be great in heaven.”
The blessing comes, not in the circumstances themselves, but in the fact that whatever we are going through, God is with us, transforming the experience by God’s ever present love. That is not an excuse for those of us who are are not experiencing, poverty, hunger, mourning or exclusion to walk away from those who are.
It can be tempting to think that we can leave their situation to God. That is never the way of the gospel. If we want to live a life based on the beatitudes we are called to reach out to those in need, to offer support, to share what we have, to alleviate suffering in whatever way we can.
Where are you being called to live the beatitudes in your life today?
