The Eightfold Noble Path

Gospel: Matthew 5: 1-12

Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount with the giving of the New Law - the eight Beatitudes.  Rather than a set of rules to follow, Jesus provides us with ways of being in the world - poor in spirit, meek, pure of heart, peacemaking, long-suffering, merciful.  These ways of being become the lens through which Jesus sets about the reinterpret the entire Mosaic law in the rest of the Sermon.  They become the path through which the Christian is to navigate in the world.

The Beatitudes are to be our daily examination in our path through life.  Some days we will find ourselves connected to a particular Beatitude, while similarly finding another one particularly challenging.  Each day of examination of our lives with these Beatitudes reveals to us more about ourselves, and more about how Jesus embodied each of these ways of being in his own life.  These maxims become our measure of progress in the spiritual life.

That we Christians have somehow neglected these precepts of the Lord Jesus and focused instead on the ten commandments is somewhat telling.  The Beatitudes are a great challenge to live, for they encompass the whole person.  They are not about merely external actions as the commandments proscribe, but more importantly they are about internal dispositions that inform our entire way of being, thinking, and acting.  Would that we had monuments for the Beatitudes instead of the commandments!