Matthew 5:1-10: a reflection

Jesus opens his great Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes, a series of blessings that overturn the world's idea of who is blessed. Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those persecuted for righteousness. To each Jesus attaches a promise: theirs is the kingdom of heaven; they shall be comforted, shall inherit the earth, shall be filled, shall see God. He pronounces blessed the very people the world overlooks or pities.

Notice who Jesus calls blessed: not the rich, the strong, the self-sufficient, the impressive, but the poor in spirit, the mourning, the meek, the hungry for righteousness. These are not the world's picture of the blessed and successful; they are the lowly, the humble, the aware of their need. Yet these, Jesus says, are the truly blessed, for to them belong the kingdom, the comfort, the inheritance, the vision of God. God's kingdom runs on a different scale of value than the world's.

That reordering both challenges and comforts. It challenges our instinct to envy the world's blessed, the rich and self-sufficient and impressive, and to want to be counted among them; Jesus points instead to poverty of spirit, meekness, hunger for righteousness, as the marks of the truly blessed. And it comforts the lowly and the mourning: if you are poor in spirit, grieving, meek, hungering for righteousness, you are not overlooked by God, but blessed, with the kingdom itself promised to you. Do not measure blessedness by the world's standards. Seek the poverty of spirit, the meekness, the hunger for righteousness that Jesus calls blessed, and take heart, if you are lowly and aware of your need, that his blessing rests on such as you.