Gospel: Mathew 5: 1-12
The first teaching Jesus provides to the world is the Beatitudes, the central points of the entire Christian life. These ideals will form the basis of all the other teaching Jesus will provide, and they will be the aspects of moral character Jesus will model for us in his life. It is these attitudes of being, not the commandments, that are the foundation of discipleship.
There is a temptation in reflecting on the Beatitudes to perseverate on one that sounds nice to our ears. That voice is pulling us away from one other Beatitude that is more difficult for us to hear, the one that is challenging us in the moment. We would like to hide from that one and set it aside and so we run to another that sounds nice to our ears. But we are called to live all these Beatitudes, and the one we want to run away from is the one we probably should face now.
Like Jonah we will not be able to run away from that which we are meant to face anyway. Perhaps that is why we prefer the ten commandments to the eight Beatitudes. The commandments don't challenge us to change deep within us; they don't challenge who we fundamentally are in our moral character. The Beatitudes represent a total change of life starting in our inner depths and moving outward to a life that reflects these inner attitudes.
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