NEWSLETTER INSERTS - ON THE BEATITUDES

‘The Beatitudes respond to the natural desire for happiness. This desire is of divine origin: God has placed it in the human heart in order to draw humanity to the One who alone can fulfill it’

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1718

‘The Beatitudes reveal the goal of human existence, the ultimate end of human acts: God calls us to his own beatitude. This vocation is addressed to each individual personally, but also to the Church as a whole, the new people made up of those who have accepted the promise and live from it in faith’.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1719

‘For he who made you did at the same time endow your nature with his wonderful quality. For God imprinted on it the likeness of the glories of his own nature, as if moulding the form of a carving into wax’.

St Gregory of Nyssa, On the Beatitudes

‘The Beatitudes are like a Christian’s identity card. So, if anyone asks: “What must one do to be a good Christian?”, the answer is clear. We have to do, each in our own way, what Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount. In the Beatitudes, we find a portrait of the Master, which we are called to reflect in our daily lives…The word “happy” or “blessed” thus becomes a synonym for “holy”. It expresses the fact that those faithful to God and his word, by their self-giving, gain true happiness’.

Pope Francis, Rejoice and Be Glad, 63-64.

'Dear brothers and sisters, the Beatitudes are the way of holiness, and the very way of happiness. It is the way that Jesus travelled. Indeed, He himself is the Way: those who walk with Him and proceed through Him enter into life, into eternal life. Let us ask the Lord for the grace to be simple and humble people, the grace to be able to weep, the grace to be meek, the grace to work for justice and peace, and above all the grace to let ourselves be forgiven by God so as to become instruments of his mercy'.

Pope Francis, 1^st November 2015.

‘The Beatitudes offer a programme for happiness for which humility is the key. Be humble and if we are, we will be happy. Among all the gurus who advise us how to be happy, no one but Jesus Christ and his Gospel point to this route in the pursuit of happiness. But blessed are we if we follow it! True humility is always accompanied by greatness of heart and confidence in the Lord’.

Fr Billy Swan