Jesus wants us to act mindfully, deliberately, and lovingly!

 
Reading: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Matthew 5:9.
 
Good morning, happy Monday, joyful All Saints’ Day, and many blessing.
 
In today’s Gospel (Matthew 5:1-12) Jesus is teaching his disciples. In his teaching, he gifts them with the Beatitudes. We all are familiar with the Beatitudes. However, do we take the time to sit with these eight beautiful teachings and ask ourselves: “How do I strive to be a living example of this beatitude?”
 
Jesus lived every one of the ‘blesseds’. As you list them, notice how he might have lived them himself. He was merciful, pure in heart (single-minded), a peacemaker. All the others find space in his life. Note them as you read the gospel and in your prayer. Jesus knew each of the Beatitudes from the inside out. He knew just where the blessing and presence of God may be found.
 
The desire to be happy is in each of us; to find happiness and peace, joy and contentment in life. At different stages of life we may look for it in different ways. A child is happy to be cared for, an adolescent sometimes to be left alone, sometimes to be close to others; we may be happy in success or praise. We may look for happiness in addictive practice, in shallow relationships, thinking we are on the path to finding what we are looking for.
 
Jesus knows that. He speaks today of how we find happiness, how we are totally blessed. He has a view of happiness different from many others. We find ‘Jesus happiness’ in being humble, gentle and kind, accepting of loss in life, in really going for what is just and right, in being straightforward and people of integrity, and in making peace. We find happiness in putting up with different hardships, humiliations and even injustice when the cause is for God.
 
What the world sees as tragic or empty, Jesus sees as blessed: humility, mourning, gentleness, peacefulness, and other virtues. Jesus lived by these qualities himself and we can notice them in his words and actions during his life with us on earth. He could encourage us to live in the spirit of the Beatitudes because he himself lived them and knew that a life of integrity and honesty is indeed a blessed life.
 
Easy to recite these ‘blesseds’ as a sort of mantra. They are the vision statement of Jesus. He lived what he said – that all of life is blessed, even the experiences we might never ask for. All who live according to his way of life are – and will be – richly blessed.
 
Jesus does not want us simply to act. Jesus wants us to act mindfully, deliberately, and lovingly! Will we choose to do this today? We may not only give a great gift to another, we may receive a great gift as we share the little that we have! I allow these blessings to come home to me. I imagine Jesus carefully speaking to them to me, aware of my poverty, sadness and hunger. As I live with difficulties, I seek to hear Jesus speaking the Beatitudes to me as I encounter them.
 
Blessings,
 
Fr. Luis+