I want to give full credit here to Pope Benedict XVI, of happy memory: I’m drawing a lot of what I say thismorning from his reflections on this very important gospel passage, which you can find in his magnificent three-volume life of the Lord, called “Jesus of Nazareth,” which I certainly recommend to all of you.  It’s a readable and inspiring series of reflections on the life of Our Lord, and there’s a very rich reflection on this passage. 

The first thing that Pope Benedict reminds us of, is that these beatitudes, this teaching is situated within the context of Jewish morality.  In other words, these insights aren’t opposed to the 10 Commandments: they just help us understand them, and understand the law and the prophets in an even deeper and more profound way.  He insists that he hasn’t come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them, and these beatitudes help us understand what that means. 

The first line of this gospel passage is “When Jesus saw the crowds…” and then he launches into this teaching.  We can imagine that when Our Lord looked out, he saw all of these characteristics that he’s about to describe, that he’s about to characterize as blessed: he sees people who are poor, people who are in mourning, people who are persecuted, people who are trying to be merciful and pure of heart.  It’s why he goes through this magnificent rhetorical crescendo: blessed are these people, and blessed are these people, and blessed are these people and these people and these people…and at the very end of the list: and blessed are you.  I’ve been talking about you the whole time.  It’s wonderful, stirring rhetoric. 

And these statements are paradoxes.  When we see things from God’s perspective, the standards of the world are turned upside down.  Those who seem to us, to our human wisdom, to be the weakest and most forgotten, are those who are truly blessed when seen in the Light of Christ.  This is a promise about life in heaven, but it’s also true for us now.  The presence of Christ in our lives can bring peace and joy into the midst of what we experience, even the hard things.  Pope Benedict says that these beatitudes are both practical and theological: that they are a kind of portrait of Christ and of the Christian disciple. 

We don’t have time to go through each beatitude one by one, although Pope Benedict does, and you should definitely read that section of the book if you’re interested.  But an important way to think about all these characteristics in general is as the remedy for our human pride.  Ever since the Garden of Eden, we’ve wanted to do it “our own way,” even if that makes no actual sense.  We presume to place ourselves in a position to define reality, which of course only God is competent to do.  Our pride makes us unwilling to accept truth and reality if they are uncomfortable to us.  “I know better.”  “I’m an exception.”  The philosophers and influential thinkers of the world, like Nietzsche for example, see these beatitudes as a kind of sour grapes experience, a coping mechanism for people to justify and come to terms with their own weaknesses and failures.  This wisdom of the world tends to recommend maximizing your power in order to squeeze out all the possible pleasures you can get out of life, without much regard to how, or whom you have to step on in the process.  But it’s ancient wisdom, both in Scripture and in the great Greek and Shakespearean tragedies, that pride (hubris), this way of thinking, leads to nowhere but death and despair.  This arrogant presumption of self-sufficiency and autonomy: we set ourselves up as our own God.  But it doesn’t work.  Because it’s not real.  There is actually a God, in reality, and I’m not him.  And, sorry, but neither are you.  And that’s actually a good thing, a comforting thing.  That’s why the meek and the humble, and even the poor and sorrowful, are blessed.  Because they don’t lack anything that actually matters.  And they are free of those things which can suck you into these cycles of pride and tragedy. 

So, for us, observing the Ten Commandments, taking our choices seriously, really trying to foster simplicity and humility and gentleness: those things won’t just make us happy; they will make us blessed, which is way better, because it gives us an actually sustainable way to live life here on earth, and even more importantly, prepares us for our eternity in heaven.  Pope Benedict concludes, and I will too, by saying this: “Compared with the tempting lustre of Nietzsche’s image of man, this way seems at first wretched, and thoroughly unreasonable.  But it is the real high road of life; it is only on the way of love, whose paths are described in the Sermon on the Mount, that the richness of life and the greatness of man’s calling are opened up.”