After His teaching of the Great Christian prayer, the Our Father, the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount which we hear in today’s Gospel are probably among Jesus’s most famous and important teachings. Perhaps the only other teaching of similar importance would be the Great Commandment that Christ has given, that we must love the Lord our God above all things and our neighbour as ourselves. These three teachings are intimately connected as the fundamental teachings for the followers of Jesus.

The Beatitudes use repeatedly the word “blessed.” To be “blessed” means to live in the presence of the Lord and to enjoy His grace in our lives. When something is blessed, we ask that it may be put aside or placed in God’s presence. When a thing or place is blessed, we ask that God set it aside and watch over it. When a person is blessed, we ask that God send His Spirit upon them and watch over them. One of the most powerful examples of what it means to be blessed is what we experience when we come into the Lord’s presence at the celebration of every Mass. Just before we come to receive the Eucharist, when the Lord is present among us in the Blessed Sacrament, we all kneel down and proclaim that we are blessed because we stand in the presence of Christ. The beautiful proclamation: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb,” spells out clearly that all who are in Christ’s presence are to be called blessed. As we come for communion, we are blessed to be in His presence. The saints are also blessed because they are in Heaven in the Lord’s presence for all eternity. This is why in the Eucharistic Prayers the saints are called blessed. The most famous example the Church has of one who is blessed is Mary. We acknowledge this as we pray the “Hail Mary” and say, “The Lord is with you, blessed are you among all women.” Because the Lord is with Mary, she is blessed.

Mary is in fact called the first and perfect Christian because she lived her entire life in God’s presence as the example of the blessed life. Mary’s life shows us how we are to live the Beatitudes. While I always like to find a movie or contemporary story as an example about how to tell the Gospel story each week, this week as I was preparing the homily, I could think of no example more powerful than the life of Mary. Mary’s entire life was a “yes” to God’s will and an openness to being in God’s presence. In her poverty of spirit, she said yes to the unfathomable task that God was entrusting to her in asking her to be the mother of God. With meekness and purity of heart she raised the Christ child and was always obedient to God’s will for her. Despite the possibility that Joseph would reject her on learning of her pregnancy, Mary never feared to follow the Lord in all of His ways. Mary is also an example of one who mourns the loss of her Son, confident that God will raise Him up again through the resurrection. She remains with the Apostles in the days following Christ’s death and strengthens their faith that through her conviction they might be able to preach the Good News of the Resurrection with confidence. From her life, we see that Mary was blessed because she clung to the Lord at all times.

In fact, if I were to try and summarize the main lesson of the Beatitudes, I would paraphrase it this way: “If you wish to be Blessed, cling to the Lord at all times.” The first of the Beatitudes calls Christians to a poverty in spirit that acknowledges we cannot control all things and that ultimately God is in charge and we are pilgrims on this earth. The Christian life calls for a certain amount of detachment, since everything but God’s love is passing. If we cling too strongly to the things of this life, we will resent God who eventually will call us and everything else back to himself. The passing nature of life is expressed in the Beatitude, “blessed are those who mourn.” Not resenting God when we must let go of others, those who trust in God will have restored to them all those they have lost in the resurrection. The meekness that the beatitudes invite us to is simply a recognition that God is ultimately in charge of the universe and our lives and there is no way of fighting this fact of life. At the same time, because God is in charge of the universe, each Christian is to search to build the Kingdom up according to the Gospel and God’s plan. In the name of justice and righteousness, the Christian is to take a stand against evil, injustice and all that assaults the dignity of the human person.

The Beatitudes go on to tell us that those who show mercy, will have mercy shown them. This is a beautiful reminder that if we hold a grudge or refuse to forgive, we ourselves cannot know God’s forgiveness or know His peace. It is only those who are pure of heart that can, like Mary, dwell in Christ’s presence today. When our hearts are full of resentment and grudges, there is no room for the Lord to dwell there. It is impossible to see God if we cling to images and things that cloud our ability to perceive Him through the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives today. Remaining faithful to God in the midst of a world that does not often wish to hear about Him or acknowledge His presence calls the Christian often to be persecuted for righteousness sake. This involves a willingness to be more concerned about God’s opinion of us than that of our neighbour and the world’s approval. In fact, the true Christian will find himself or herself mocked by the world, as were the early Christians and those who dared to say that Jesus had risen from the dead. “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you on my account and utter all kinds of evil against you,” reminds us of the fate of the early Christians and Christ Himself. The Christian is never called to be silent in the face of political correctness and to fail to speak of the Gospel, even when it will lead to their being made fun of and ostracized. The Christian who wishes to be blessed must cling to Christ and not worry of the consequences. This is a radical invitation, but one that assures that we will always be in Christ’s presence.

The Beatitudes are not easy to live. They call for a kind of constant dedication to God and a willingness to make Him the centre of our lives. The kind of life which the Beatitudes call all of us to is that radical acceptance of God’s will in our lives that was lived by Jesus, Mary and all of the great saints in our Christian tradition. Because it is such a difficult way of life, Jesus has actually taught us a prayer that we are to say everyday seeking the assistance of the Father to live this way. In the Our Father, whether we recognize it or not, Jesus has taught us the way in which we are to pray to live the beatitudes. The petitions of the Our Father call us to pray in a way that seeks God’s assistance that we might live each day the Beatitudes. We can see this call by connecting each petition of the Our Father with that Beatitude which that petition seeks God’s assistance to live. Many of these relationships between the Our Father and the Beatitudes can be discovered in the commentary on the Our Father that is found in the fourth section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church—the section on prayer. The Catechism presents a beautiful commentary on the Our Father.

• When we address our prayer to “Our Father” we are acknowledging that God is our creator and that all we have comes from God. This recognition calls us to a poverty of spirit that acknowledges nothing is truly ours and that all belongs to God. We are blessed when we acknowledge this because we will never allow the loss of any of God’s gifts to separate us from Him.
• The petition “Hallowed be thy name,” asks that we might see God in all things. This is something that the pure of heart are able to do as they see God as the creator of all things and never seek to use another person or thing for purposes other than God has created them for and the dignity He has bestowed upon it or them.
• “Thy Kingdom Come” expresses a certainty that God will raise up all the dead at the resurrection and that those who mourn will have that which they have lost restored in the resurrection— therefore death or loss should never separate us from Christ.
• The meek are blessed because they accept that God is the creator and our good is to be found in His will. Therefore, we are to pray “Thy will be done.”
• Those who hunger for righteousness and justice pray: “Give us this day our daily bread.” With this prayer we seek only what is truly needed in this life for our sustenance and do not seek to gather up so much that others are deprived of what they need for survival. This is an invitation to build up the Kingdom on earth by works of justice and self-control.
• When we pray “Forgive us our sins,” we acknowledge the need to be merciful ourselves. Throughout the Year of Mercy we were reminded that God’s mercy calls us to be merciful towards others. As so many stories in scripture recall, if we wish to be blessed, we must be willing to forgive others so that we might stand in God’s presence.
• This is closely complimented by the petition “As we forgive” and the importance of working for true peace. Forgiving involves a recognition that none of us are perfect and ultimately we cannot truly know God’s peace if we insist on holding on to grudges. This is why the Mass calls us to the sign of peace before acknowledging that we are blessed to stand in the presence of the Lord in the Eucharist.
• Because it takes courage to stand up for the faith in our world, we ask that we will not be “Lead into temptation” to deny the faith. We cling to Christ and are willing to be persecuted in His name by our politically correct society.
• The Christian community has always regarded the last petition of the Our Father not just as a prayer against the typical dangers and evils of the day, but also as a prayer against persecutions and trials brought on by opposition from the world. The Christian prays to be protected by God from the evil in the world which might threaten communion with God, thus praying to remain blessed by continuing in God’s presence.

The Our Father is basically a prayer that begs that we might always do God’s will and live life in His presence. As such, it asks that we may never be separated from Christ and know and live the Blessed life. It is significant that we pray it in the liturgy before we receive the Eucharist. As the Eucharist allows us to know a glimpse of the Blessed life, by placing us in Christ’s presence before the Lord, so the Our Father articulates the hope that we shall always remain there and nothing in life should take us out of God’s presence. In the Beatitudes, we are told that if we truly wish to live a blessed life, we must not allow anything in life to take us away from God or stand in the way of our relationship with Him. To live the Christian life, we must like Mary, cling to Jesus through the trails, losses and tribulations of life. By doing so, we are invited to know God’s presence in our lives today— we need not wait until we come to Heaven. Since this is not an easy thing to do, Jesus has taught us a prayer in which we are to ask for the graces to remain in His presence. The Our Father is that prayer in which we ask for the strength to cling to God throughout all the trials of life. As the Beatitudes make perfectly clear, only those who are given the grace to cling to Christ through the trials of this life will truly know the blessedness of the Kingdom, for there will be nothing that can separate them from the love of Christ. This is ultimately what the Beatitudes are, a way of living so that nothing may separate us from Christ and the salvation that He has won for us.

May each of us always be blessed by God through our living of the Beatitudes.

Fr. Michael McGourty
Pastor— St. Peter’s Church— Toronto