The Beatitudes are not infrequently presented as the New Testament’s counterpart to the Ten Commandments, as an example of the Christian ethics that is supposedly superior to the commands of the Old Testament. This approach totally misconstrues these words of Jesus. Jesus always presupposed the validity of the Ten Commandments as a matter of course (see, for example, Mark 10:19; Luke 16:17).
In the Sermon on the Mount, he recapitulates and gives added depth to the commandments of the second tablet, but he does not abolish them (cf. Matthew 5:21-48). To do so would in any case diametrically contradict the fundamental principle underpinning his discussion of the Ten Commandments:
“Think not that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”
Matthew 5:17-18
This statement, which only appears to contradict the teaching of Saint Paul, will require further discussion after our examination of the dialogue between Jesus and the rabbi. For the time being, it suffices to note that Jesus has no intention or abrogating the Ten Commandments. On the contrary, he reinforces them.
But what are the Beatitudes?
First of all, they are situated within a long tradition of Old Testament teachings, such as we find in Psalm 1 and in the parallel text at Jeremiah 17:7–8: Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord. These are words of promise. At the same time, though, they are criteria for the discernment of spirits and so they prove to be directions for finding the right path.
The setting in which Luke frames the Sermon on the Mount clarifies to whom the Beatitudes of Jesus are addressed: “He lifted up his eyes on his disciples.” The individual Beatitudes are the fruit of this looking upon the disciples; they describe what might be called the actual condition of Jesus’ disciples: They are poor, hungry, weeping men; they are hated and persecuted (cf. Luke 6:20ff.). These statements are meant to list practical, but also theological, attributes of the disciples of Jesus – of those who have set out to follow Jesus and have become his family.
Yet the menacing empirical situation in which Jesus sees his followers becomes a promise when his looking upon them is illuminated in the light of the Father. The Beatitudes, spoken with the community of Jesus’ disciples in view, are paradoxes – the standards of the world are turned upside down as soon as things are seen in the right perspective, which is to say, in terms of God’s values, so different from those of the world. It is precisely those who are poor in worldly terms, those thought of as lost souls, who are the truly fortunate ones, the blessed, who have every reason to rejoice and exult in the midst of their sufferings.
The Beatitudes are promises resplendent with the new image of the world and of man inaugurated by Jesus, his “transformation of values.” They are eschatological promises. This must not, however, be taken to mean that the joy they proclaim is postponed until some infinitely remote future or applies exclusively to the next world. When man begins to see and to live from God’s perspective, when he is a companion on Jesus’ way, then he lives by new standards, and something of the éschaton, of the reality to come, is already present. Jesus brings joy into the midst of affliction.
Paradoxes in the Beatitudes
The paradoxes that Jesus presents in the Beatitudes express the believer’s true situation in the world in similar terms to those repeatedly used by Paul to describe his experience of living and suffering as an Apostle:
“We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”
2 Corinthians 6:8–10
“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.”
2 Corinthians
What the Beatitudes in Luke’s Gospel present as a consolation and a promise, Paul presents as the lived experience of the apostle. He considers that he has been made “last of all,” a man under a death sentence, a spectacle to the world, homeless, calumniated, despised (cf. 1 Corinthians 4:9–13). And yet he experiences a boundless joy. As the one who has been handed over, who has given himself away in order to bring Christ to men, he experiences the interconnectedness of Cross and Resurrection: We are handed over to death “so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Corinthians 4:11).
In his messengers Christ himself still suffers, still hangs on the Cross. And yet he is risen, irrevocably risen. Although Jesus’ messenger in this world is still living the story of Jesus’ suffering, the splendor of the Resurrection shines through, and it brings a joy, a “blessedness,” greater than the happiness he could formerly have experienced on worldly paths. It is only now that he realizes what real “happiness,” what true “blessedness” is, and, in so doing, notices the paltriness of what by conventional standards must be considered satisfaction and happiness.
The paradoxes that Saint Paul experienced in his life, which correspond to the paradoxes of the Beatitudes, thus display the same thing that John expresses in yet another way when he calls the Lord’s Cross an “exaltation,” an elevation to God’s throne on high. John brings Cross and Resurrection, Cross and exaltation together in a single word, because for him the one is in fact inseparable from the other.
The Cross is the act of the “exodus,” the act of love that is accomplished to the uttermost and reaches “to the end” (John 13:1). And so it is the place of glory – the place of true contact and union with God, who is love (cf. 1 John 4:7, 16). This Johannine vision, then, is the ne plus ultra in concentrating the paradoxes of the Beatitudes and bringing them within reach of our understanding.
Beatitudes express the meaning of discipleship
This reflection upon Paul and John has shown us two things. First, the Beatitudes express the meaning of discipleship. They become more concrete and real the more completely the disciple dedicates himself to service in the way that is illustrated for us in the life of Saint Paul. What the Beatitudes mean cannot be expressed in purely theoretical terms; it is proclaimed in the life and suffering, and in the mysterious joy, of the disciple who gives himself over completely to following the Lord.
Transposition of Cross and Resurrection into discipleship
This leads to the second point: the Christological character of the Beatitudes. The disciple is bound to the mystery of Christ. His life is immersed in communion with Christ:
“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
Galatians 2:20
The Beatitudes are the transposition of Cross and Resurrection into discipleship. But they apply to the disciple because they were first paradigmatically lived by Christ himself.
This becomes even more evident if we turn now to consider Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes (cf. Matthew 5:3–12). Anyone who reads Matthew’s text attentively will realize that the Beatitudes present a sort of veiled interior biography of Jesus, a kind of portrait of his figure. He who has no place to lay his head (cf. Matthew 8:20) is truly poor; he who can say, “Come to me…for I am meek and lowly in heart” (cf. Matthew 11:28–29) is truly meek; he is the one who is pure of heart and so unceasingly beholds God. He is the peacemaker, he is the one who suffers for God’s sake.
The Beatitudes display the mystery of Christ himself, and they call us into communion with him. But precisely because of their hidden Christological character, the Beatitudes are also a road map for the Church, which recognizes in them the model of what she herself should be. They are directions for discipleship, directions that concern every individual, even though—according to the variety of callings – they do so differently for each person.
“The poor in spirit”
Let us now take a somewhat closer look at each individual link in the chain of the Beatitudes. First of all, we have the much debated saying about the “poor in spirit.” This term figures in the Qumran scrolls as the self-designation of the pious. They also call themselves “the poor of grace,” “the poor of thy redemption,” or simply “the poor” (Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium, I, p. 121). By referring to themselves in this way, they express their awareness of being the true Israel, thereby invoking traditions that are deeply rooted in Israel’s faith.
At the time of the Babylonian conquest of Judea, 90 percent of Judeans would have been counted among the poor; Persian tax policy resulted in another situation of dramatic poverty after the Exile. It was no longer possible to maintain the older vision according to which the righteous prosper and poverty is a consequence of a bad life (the so-called Tun-Ergehens-Zusammenhang, or conduct-life correspondence). Now Israel recognizes that its poverty is exactly what brings it close to God; it recognizes that the poor, in their humility, are the ones closest to God’s heart, whereas the opposite is true of the arrogant pride of the rich, who rely only on themselves.
Deep devotion and piety of the poor find expression in many Psalms
The piety of the poor that grew out of this realization finds expression in many of the Psalms; the poor recognize themselves as the true Israel. In the piety of these Psalms, in their expression of deep devotion to God’s goodness, in the human goodness and humility that grew from it as men waited vigilantly for God’s saving love – here developed that generosity of heart that was to open the door for Christ.
Mary and Joseph, Simeon and Anna, Zachariah and Elizabeth, the shepherds of Bethlehem, and the Twelve whom the Lord called to intimate discipleship are all part of this current, which contrasts with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, but also, despite a great deal of spiritual affinity, with Qumran as well. They are the ones in whom the New Testament begins, in full awareness of its perfect unity with the faith of Israel that has been maturing to ever greater purity.
Silently evolving here was the attitude before God that Paul explored in his theology of justification: These are people who do not flaunt their achievements before God. They do not stride into God’s presence as if they were partners able to engage with him on an equal footing; they do not lay claim to a reward for what they have done. These are people who know that their poverty also has an interior dimension; they are lovers who simply want to let God bestow his gifts upon them and thereby to live in inner harmony with God’s nature and word.
“Standing before God with empty hands”
The saying of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux about one day standing before God with empty hands, and holding them open to him, describes the spirit of these poor ones of God: They come with empty hands; not with hands that grasp and clutch, but with hands that open and give and thus are ready to receive from God’s bountiful goodness.
Because this is the case, there is no opposition between Matthew, who speaks of the poor in spirit, and Luke, in whose Gospel the Lord addresses the “poor” without further qualification. Some have claimed that Matthew took the concept of poverty that Luke originally understood in a totally material and real way, spiritualized it, and so robbed it of its radicalism. Yet anyone who reads the Gospel of Luke knows perfectly well that it is he who introduces us to the “poor in spirit” – the sociological group, one might say, among whom Jesus’ earthly journey, and that of his message, could begin. Conversely, it is clear that Matthew remains completely in the tradition of piety reflected in the Psalms and so in the vision of the true Israel expressed in them.
The poverty of which this tradition speaks is never a purely material phenomenon. Purely material poverty does not bring salvation, though of course those who are disadvantaged in this world may count on God’s goodness in a particular way. But the heart of those who have nothing can be hardened, poisoned, evil – interiorly full of greed for material things, forgetful of God, covetous of external possessions.
On the other hand, the poverty spoken of here is not a purely spiritual attitude, either. Admittedly, not everyone is called to the radicalism with which so many true Christians – from Anthony, father of monasticism, to Francis of Assisi, down to the exemplary poor of our era – have lived and continue to live their poverty as a model for us.
Communities that witness the truth of the beatitudes
But, in order to be the community of Jesus’ poor, the Church has constant need of the great ascetics. She needs the communities that follow them, living out poverty and simplicity so as to display to us the truth of the Beatitudes. She needs them to wake everyone up to the fact that possession is all about service, to contrast the culture of affluence with the culture of inner freedom, and thereby to create the conditions for social justice as well.
The Sermon on the Mount is not a social program per se, to be sure. But it is only when the great inspiration it gives us vitally influences our thought and our action, only when faith generates the strength of renunciation and responsibility for our neighbor and for the whole of society – only then can social justice grow, too. And the Church as a whole must never forget that she has to remain recognizably the community of God’s poor. Just as the Old Testament opened itself through God’s poor to renewal in the New Covenant, so too any renewal of the Church can be set in motion only through those who keep alive in themselves the same resolute humility, the same goodness that is always ready to serve.
Thus far, we have considered only the first half of the first Beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” In both Matthew and Luke the promise assigned to them is as follows: “Theirs [yours] is the Kingdom of God [the Kingdom of heaven]” (Matthew 5:3; Lk 6:20). “Kingdom of God” is the basic category of Jesus’ message; here it becomes part of the Beatitudes. This context is important for a correct understanding of this much disputed term. We have already seen this in our examination of the meaning of the expression “Kingdom of God,” and we will need to recall it frequently in the course of our further reflections.
This excerpt on the Beatitudes is from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan River to the Transfiguration, by Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI, Chapter 4, The Sermon on the Mount © 2007 by Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Citta del Vaticano. Paperback edition published by Ignatius Press 2008, San Francisco, USA, translated from the German into English by Adrian J. Walker.
Top image credit: An Illustration of various witness of the beatitudes of Jesus – Augustine of Hippo, Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Joan of Arc, John Wesley, the 21 Coptic martyrs of Libya., and a quote from Philippians 4:11-13. Image created with digital paintbrush and AI enhanced artwork from © Artstyles.com. Used with permission.