Article June 29, 2015 Issue

The Beatitudes: a guide to Christian practice

Caryl Emra Farkas

I learned the Beatitudes, as given in the Sermon on the Mount in the Bible (see Matthew 5:3–12), by heart when I was a child in Sunday School, but it wasn’t until years later that I came to a profound realization about them: that the Beatitudes, when applied to our lives, transform our thinking so that we demonstrate “the mind of Christ” (I Corinthians 2:16). Each beatitude involves growth in grace and indicates, not a future reward, but an already present, God-supplied blessing.

Though some of these statements that Christ Jesus made to the multitudes could, at first glance, seem counterintuitive, I’ve found the opposite. The first beatitude says, “Blessed” (or as some translations put it, “How happy”) are they that are “poor in spirit.” This hardly seems a propitious condition! Yet the beatitude continues, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” It seems to me that Jesus’ saying points us to the recognition that when we are poor in spirit—feeling the dissatisfaction and emptiness of material existence—we are ready to consider and understand the present reality of spiritual existence and the joy it brings. In this way, man’s extremity truly becomes God’s opportunity. 

The next beatitude, “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted,” shows us that lamenting what we lack and can’t find in matter—health, goodness, love—makes way in our thought for the perception that spirituality is the one treasure worth having. The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, explains, “When the sick or the sinning awake to realize their need of what they have not, they will be receptive of divine Science, which gravitates towards Soul and away from material sense, removes thought from the body, and elevates even mortal mind to the contemplation of something better than disease or sin” (p. 323). Right in the midst of mourning we can find, through spiritual sense, our unbreakable connection with God, divine Love, who gives us health, goodness, and comfort, and that is a blessed thing!

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