When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain,
and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him.
He began to teach them
Jesus went up the mountain and began to teach, giving the discourse we know as the Sermon on the Mount, beginning with the Beatitudes. He was like a new Moses who received the law from God on Mount Sinai and then gave it to the people. And although the new law of Jesus at times seemed to directly contradict the law of Moses he assured his hearers that he had not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. So when he referred to what they had previously heard said to them and then followed up with his famous, "But I say to you", the later was actually a more complete expression of the original goal that was present in germinal seed in the former. That said, it was not obviously present. Interpreters of the law tended to insist on taking it at face value, allowing for no meaning but the concrete and the obvious. Thus if they did not find mercy directly enjoined on them but justice and punishment directly commanded they would allow no room for the former and insist on the later, missing the fact that God's desire for mercy and not for sacrifice was an overarching principle of the whole of the existent scriptures.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
The characteristics that qualified for blessings were not those typically lauded by the cultures of that time. Riches and wealth were seen as a sign of favor leading to prominence in the kingdom of this world. But Jesus reversed this, insisting that life in this world should not be focused on riches here, but rather on treasure in heaven. Rather than those seeking after profit Jesus praised those sufficiently detached from worldly wealth to prioritize heavenly treasure. Worldly wealth could readily become a snare. But the poor in spirit had a corresponding freedom that opened them to receive the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Mourning, sorrow, and suffering were not necessarily indicators of having failed or of being cursed by God. Rather, they were at least potentially markers of those whose longing for the world to come was so great as to not allow them to be fully content with the present state of affairs. Those who longed for joy in this world were setting themselves up for disappointment since this world did not produce joy consistently or endlessly. But those who aligned their deepest desires with God's desires for the world were setting themselves up for eventual and ultimate satisfaction.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the land.
It seemed like the strong were the ones that inherited the land. The decidedly strong Roman occupying force seemed like the definitive proof of this reality. But Jesus promised that it was not ultimately they, but the meek who would inherit the land. It was not bullies or conquering forces or grand armies that would ultimately inherit the land. No, such perpetrators of violence would rise and fall, but none would ever achieve anything stable or permanent. Jesus himself appeared to have been conquered by violence and strength, but it was precisely then that he was victorious. And his victory was a promise of victory for all who put their trust in him.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
Most of us tend to desire food and water that leave us hungering and thirsting for more. We may desire righteousness, but not so viscerally as to prefer it even to the needs of the body. Yet we can see that Jesus himself definitely did prefer his Father's will to earthly food, confounding the temptation of the devil in the desert, and at another time, allowing Jesus to say "I have food to eat that you do not know about" (see John 4:32) because "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work" (see John 4:34). Later on, in the age of the Church, we would see that the followers of Jesus shared his prioritization of the Father's will. This extended to their hunger for the Eucharist, since from it they gained the grace and strength needed to express righteousness in their own lives.
It may have seemed like mercy, purity, and peacemaking were unprofitable abstractions with no place in the hearts and minds of serious adults seeking to improve the condition of their society. These attributes which Jesus called blessed doubtlessly seemed functionally impotent from the point of view of those who primarily defined themselves by how they were oppressed. And because our own society insists that we all find the ways in which we have been individually and specifically oppressed and to use that a the keystone of our self-definition it is no wonder we find so little mercy, purity, or peace in our world. Instead, we ought to consider mercy and peace before we stake our identity on how we were wronged. Purity is not popular in our time because we don't want to be told who we are or what to do. But purity is not a constriction of true freedom, but rather its expression. When we live according to God's design and blueprint we are protected from succumbing to slavery to our passions. Only if we live in this sort of freedom of heart will there be enough room in us for the vision of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Jesus seemed to be explaining why his mission and that of his followers might have seemed in the eyes of the world to be a failure but was not in fact a failure. He did not seem to be immediately or obviously obtaining what were conventionally considered to be covenant blessings. But these blessings and the conditions for their reception were different than anyone had previously imagined. The possibility of riches in heaven and rewards in the Kingdom of God were of greater gain than any of the temporary benefits of this life. It was, no doubt, a hard message to accept at first. But only such a narrative could truly give meaning to the struggles of life in this world.
Since most of us have been blessed with at least a moderate level of wealth and success we tend to care less about the promises of the beatitudes. But we are still meant to learn to recognize that the blessings we have here below cannot last forever and learn here and now to value the treasure that we can keep forever.
I lift up my eyes toward the mountains;
whence shall help come to me?
My help is from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
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