Beatitudes
The Pharisees demanded strict observance of the Mosaic law expressed in the Torah, but also accepted the oral tradition of Jewish customs and rituals. The Sadducees were mainly from the priestly families and accepted the Law of Moses but rejected oral tradition.
The Pharisees, unlike the Sadducees, believed in the resurrection of the dead. The monastic Essenes awaited a Messiah that would establish a Kingdom on earth and free the Israelites from oppression. The Zealots were a militant Jewish group who wanted freedom for their homeland, and were centered in Galilee; one of the Twelve Apostles was Simon the Zealot. In contrast, the message of Jesus is one of humility, charity, and brotherly love. He teaches transformation of the inner person.
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- THE EIGHT BEATITUDES OF JESUS.
Jesus presents the Beatitudes in a positive sense, virtues in life which will ultimately lead to reward. Love becomes the motivation for the Christian. All of the Beatitudes have an eschatological meaning, that is, they promise us salvation - not in this world, but in the next. The Beatitudes initiate one of the main themes of Matthew's Gospel, that the Kingdom so long awaited in the Old Testament is not of this world, but of the next, the Kingdom of Heaven.
While the Beatitudes of Jesus provide a way of life that promises salvation, they also bring peace in the midst of our trials and tribulations on this earth. An early contemplation on the Beatitudes came from St. He described the Beatitudes this way:. Perhaps the meaning of beatitude may become clearer to us if it is compared with its opposite.
Now the opposite of beatitude is misery. Misery means being afflicted unwillingly with painful sufferings.
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Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
THE EIGHT BEATITUDES OF JESUS
Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Humility is the realization that all your gifts and blessings come from the grace of God. To have poverty of spirit means to be completely empty and open to the Word of God. When we are an empty cup and devoid of pride, we are humble. Humility brings an openness and an inner peace, allowing one to do the will of God.
He who humbles himself is able to accept our frail nature, to repent, and to allow the grace of God to lead us to conversion. It is pride, the opposite of humility, that brings misery.
Matthew 5:1-12
For pride brings anger and the seeking of revenge, especially when one is offended. If every man were humble and poor in spirit, there would be no war! If we are humble and appreciate that all of our gifts and blessings come from God, we grow in love and gratitude for Jesus Christ our Savior. But this can only produce mourning and regret over our own sins and the sins of this world, for we have hurt the one who has been so good to us. One also mourns for the suffering of others.
Gregory describes another reason to mourn: When one contemplates that we were made in the image and likeness of God and lived in Paradise, the Garden of Eden, and compare that to our present state after the Fall, one can only mourn our present condition. But the sentence continues that they shall be comforted , by the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, and hopefully one day in the Kingdom of Heaven. Pray for the fruit of the Holy Spirit Galatians 5: Mourning in this context is called a blessing, because mourning our fallen nature creates in us a desire to improve ourselves and to do what is right!
Gregory of Nyssa saw the Beatitudes as arranged like so many steps, so as to facilitate the ascent from one to another. For example, a humble person comes to be meek, or becomes gentle and kind, and exhibits a docility of spirit, even in the face of adversity and hardship. Jesus was "meek and humble of heart" Matthew A person that is meek is one that exhibits self-control. Augustine advises us to be meek in the face of the Lord, and not resist but be obedient to him. Obedience and submission to the will of God are certainly not in vogue these days, but they will bring one peace in this world and in the next.
Justice and righteousness in the New Covenant indicate the fulfillment of God's will in your heart and soul. It is not mere observance of the law Matthew 5: A continuous desire for justice and moral perfection will lead one to a fulfillment of that desire - a transition and conversion to holiness.
This is true for all the virtues - if you hunger and thirst for temperance, you will head towards the goal you have in mind. Friedrich Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morals considered the verse to be embodying what he perceived as a slave morality. In Christian teachings, the Works of Mercy , which have corporal and spiritual components, have resonated with the theme of the Beatitude for mercy. The term "peacemakers" has traditionally been interpreted to mean not only those who live in peace with others, but also those who do their best to promote friendship among mankind and between God and man.
Gregory of Nyssa interpreted it as "Godly work", which was an imitation of God's love of man. They use all innocent arts, and employ all their strength, all the talents which God has given them, as well to preserve peace where it is, as to restore it where it is not. Tozer describes poverty of spirit as "an inward state paralleling the outward circumstances of the common beggar in the streets. William Burnet Wright , seeking to avoid a common misunderstanding of the meaning of poverty of spirit, distinguishes those who are "poor in spirit" from those he calls "poor spirited," who "consider crawling the Christian's proper gait.
Dallas Willard , most notably, in the fourth chapter of his "The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God" has proposed that the Beatitudes are not virtues or meritorious conditions. Rather, they are proclamations that the people before Jesus on the mountain are blessed well off because they are disciples of Jesus Christ.
These proclamations are instructive in that they communicate to the hearers that many who are in a deplorable condition are blessed in spite of this because the kingdom of heaven has been opened even to them by Jesus Christ. Alfred Edersheim held a similar or identical view. He is quoted by Willard as saying: The connecting link is in each case Christ Himself: The Beatitudes then, are, according to Willard, " Psalm 34, 37, and Again, the inversion occurs, not because of a meritorious condition but in spite of it and by God's salvific intiative. In the Book of Mormon , a religious text of Mormonism , Jesus gives a sermon to a group of indigenous Americans including statements very similar to Matthew 6 and evidently derived therefrom: Yea, blessed are the poor in spirit 'who come unto me,' for theirs is the kingdom of heaven 3 Nephi And blessed are all they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled 'with the Holy Ghost' 3 Nephi Blessed the soul that hath been raised to life through My quickening breath and hath gained admittance into My heavenly Kingdom.
The Qur'an quotes the Bible only in Q: The Bhagavad Gita and the traditional writings of Buddhism e. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other uses, see beatitudes disambiguation. In rest of the NT.
Beatitudes - Wikipedia
Road to Damascus John's vision. The Gospel of the Kingdom.
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Retrieved September 5, Sophia Institute Press, NH. The Gospel According to Matthew: Dictionary of the Bible: University Press of the Pacific. New Century Bible Commentary: A Divine Mercy Resource.