The Power of the Beatitudes

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3).

Pope Francis ceaselessly exhorted Christians to live the Beatitudes as being the only way to find true happiness (Pope Francis, Angelus, January 29, 2020 and November 1, 2021), and also as “the only way to rebuild a society which is often sick with pride and with an insatiable desire for riches and domination” (Jacques Philippe, The Eight Doors of the Kingdom: Meditations on the Beatitudes).

Pope Leo, in recent days addressing one million youth in Rome, entrusted them to be “salt of the earth” and “light of the world” (Matt. 5: 13-14 quoted by Pope Leo XIV, Homily, July 30, 2025 and August 3, 2025)—meaning that the Church also must be poor, humble, meek, and merciful.

We’re all called to hear this essential teaching of Our Lord. As the Church continues its pilgrimage through history, it is increasingly summoned to radiate the spirit of the Beatitudes, giving off what St. Paul called “the sweet odor of Christ” (2 Cor. 2:15).

The Holy Spirit means to act forcefully to this end, even if doing so sometimes stirs up the Church. Every Christian must give off that aroma of the gospel, the aroma of peace and meekness, of joy and humility.

“The Beatitudes contain liberating and enlightening wisdom, but they can also be among those parts of the gospel that we have the most difficulty understanding and putting into practice. Even among Christians one finds a tendency to think a lot in terms of riches, of quantity, or measurable efficiencie, whereas the Gospel invites us to adopt a very different attitude” (Jacques PhiIippe, ibid.).

The Gospel passage of the Beatitudes is not an easy passage to understand. It’s paradoxical, even shocking. We have to read Our Lord’s words in their context.

The Beatitudes come after verses in Matthew’s Gospel describing the crowds flocking to listen to Our Lord:

“He went about in Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee and Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan” (Matt. 4:23–25).

Seeing the crowds, Our Lord climbs the mountain, sits down, lets His disciples approach Him, and begins to teach by proclaiming the Beatitudes.

The crowds that gather around Our Lord are thirsty for healing, for light, for happiness. He responds to this thirst. He gives these suffering people a magnificent promise of happiness, repeated nine times, but in language very different from what we might expect (Matt. 5:3-12).

What He proposes is not a human happiness, the image of happiness that we’re accustomed to, but rather an unexpected happiness encountered in situations and attitudes not normally associated with happiness—a happiness that is not a human production, but a surprise from God, granted precisely when and where we might think it impossible.

Notice how through the image of salt and light, Our Lord’s first words after the Beatitudes, have invoked the singular grace that rests on His disciples and to which they must be faithful:

“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, so that it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who’s in heaven” (Matt. 5:13–16).

Our Lord is quite aware of the human limits and failings of His disciples, which the Gospel stories do just the reverse of attempting to conceal. But He doesn’t hesitate to affirm that without the witness of their lives, human existence would not have any appeal or make sense, and that the world would fall into deep darkness.

And so, it’s precisely in living the Beatitudes that they can fulfill this vocation of service to the world. Only the Gospel of the Beatitudes gives human existence its full meaning and truth.

In Matthew’s Gospel, the Beatitudes form the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount. This is Our Lord’s first major discourse, which presents Him as the new Moses who proclaims the New Covenant of the Kingdom. Not, however, from the heights of Mount Sinai, smoking and quaking as we’re told in Scripture, in “thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud” (Ex. 19:16), but, as tradition says, on a little hill on the banks of the Sea of Galilee (Matt. 5:1).

But this doesn’t prevent Our Lord from speaking with force and authority, an authority that surprised the crowd and that was so different from the way the rabbis of the day taught.

Several times Our Lord says, “You have heard it was said…but I say to you.” Yet He insists that He has not come to “abolish the law and the prophets…, but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17).

And so this is a vibrant exhortation not to be content with saying “Lord, Lord” to this New Covenant but to put it into practice, thus doing the will of the Father who is in heaven (Matt. 7:21).

This New Covenant that Our Lord promulgates on the Mount of the Beatitudes is not just a moral law, even though it has obviously strong implications for the domain of human behavior. Even more deeply than a code of conduct, no matter how exalted, it is a path towards the happiness of the Kingdom, an itinerary for union with God and personal interior renewal.

It proposes a way of identification with Christ, of discovery of the Father, of openness to the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit can give us the true understanding of the Beatitudes. Only the Holy Spirit makes it possible for us to apply them in our lives.

There’s a story of a Nigerian billionaire who was interviewed by a radio presenter who asked him: “What in your life made you the happiest man in your life?”

And he replied, saying, “I’ve gone through four stages of happiness in my life. And finally, I understood the meaning of true happiness. The first stage was to accumulate wealth and means, but I did not at that stage get the happiness that I wanted.

“Then came the second stage of collecting valuables and items, but I realized that the effect of this is also temporary and that the lust for valuable things does not last long.

“Then came the third stage of getting big projects. It was then that I was holding 95 percent of the diesel supply in Nigeria and Africa. I was also the largest vessel owner in Africa and Asia. But even then, I did not get the happiness that I yearned for.

“The fourth stage was a time a friend of mine asked me to buy wheelchairs for some disabled children, about 200 kids. At the friend’s request, I immediately bought the wheelchairs, but the friend insisted that I go with him and hand over the wheelchairs to the children.

“I got ready and went with him. There, I gave these wheelchairs to the children with my own hands. I saw the strange glow of happiness on the faces of those children. I saw them all sitting on the wheelchairs moving around and having fun. It was as if they had arrived at a picnic spot where they were sharing a jackpot winning.

“I felt real joy inside me. When I decided to leave, one of the kids grabbed my legs. I tried to free my legs gently, but the child stared at my face and held my legs tightly.

“I bent down and asked the child, ‘Do you need something else?’ The answer that that child gave me not only made me happy, but changed my attitude to life completely. The child said, ‘I want to remember your face so that when I meet you in heaven, I will be able to recognize you and thank you again.’”

We could ask ourselves in our prayer on this day: What will we be remembered for after we leave our office or our family or our place of living? Will anyone desire to see our face again where it all matters?

The Beatitudes are “the pathway to authentic happiness” (Pope Francis, Audience, August 6, 2014). The Trinitarian mystery present in the Gospel of the Beatitudes deserves our particular attention.

A first reading makes it clear that the eight Beatitudes in St. Matthew are above all a portrait of Our Lord Himself. They’re “not only a map for Christian life, but they’re the secret to the heart of Jesus” (Jean-Claude Sagne, La quête de Dieu, chemin de guérison).

One could spend a long time explaining and meditating on how Christ, in His entire life and particularly in His Passion, is really the one who is poor in spirit—the only one who has really lived each of the Beatitudes, which are fully realized on the Cross.

On Calvary, Jesus was absolutely poor, afflicted, meek, hungry, and thirsty for justice, merciful, pure of heart, a maker of peace, persecuted for justice’s sake.

Practicing each of the Beatitudes to perfection, He received in fullness, through His resurrection and glorification, the promised reward, the joy of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Greater yet, He received power to admit into His Kingdom any man or woman, even the greatest of sinners, as we see Him in His encounter with the good thief only a few moments before His death. Our Lord promises that man who had invoked Him with faith, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

Our Lord also affirms in John’s Gospel, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). And so, the Beatitudes show the true face of the Father. They’re a revelation of a new face of God—a face that has nothing to do with human fabrications and projections. They reveal God’s incredible humility and infinite mercy.

The Father is infinitely rich and powerful, but there’s also a mystery of poverty in the divine being, since He is nothing but love and mercy, entirely giving of self in order to make others exist.

Like the father in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), He lives not for Himself but for His children.

God the Father occupies an important place in the Sermon on the Mount. It’s here that Our Lord teaches us the Our Father and where He extends that gentle invitation: “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:6).

Here, too, is where Our Lord invites us to abandon ourselves with confidence to God’s providence without worrying about tomorrow, because “your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things” (cf. Matt. 6:32).

And towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Our Lord asks us to put His words into practice, in as much as they express “the will of my Father in heaven” (Matt. 7:21).

It appears, then, that the Sermon on the Mount, and particularly the Beatitudes, are a gift of the Father’s mercy, a promise of grace, of interior transformation, of a new heart.

A lady in Asia told me once that she liked to think of the commandments as God the Creator speaking to His creatures. But the Beatitudes is God the Father speaking to His children.

The New Covenant proclaimed by Jesus is much more demanding than the old one, because it asks of us not merely an adherence to external norms, but a truth, a purity, and a sincerity that touch the depths of the human heart.

We’re told in St. Matthew, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20).

Our Lord demands a profound interior conversion reaching to the most intimate and secret depths of our hearts.

We would understand nothing of this New Covenant established by Jesus if we miss the point that it’s more demanding—an unheard-of demand in that it calls on us to imitate God Himself.

We are told also in St. Matthew, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48), while bestowing as a gift from the merciful Father an extraordinary promise of interior transformation by the grace of the Holy Spirit. The greater requirement is a sign of a greater promise. For God gives us what He commands.

The justice surpassing the Old Covenant to which Jesus calls us in the New Covenant is possible in light of the revelation of the Father’s love, the example of Jesus, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

The promise of the New Covenant, foretold by Jeremiah, is fulfilled in the teaching of the Gospel, in which the Holy Spirit will come to the aid of the weakness of mankind, and write God’s law on our hearts, so that we finally become capable of accomplishing it:

“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer. 31:31–33).

We can also consider the words of Ezekiel: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out your of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:26).

The Beatitudes are a description of that “new heart” that the Holy Spirit fashions in us, which is the very heart of Christ.

Vastly more than a law or an added burden, the Gospel is a grace, an outpouring of mercy, a promise of interior transformation by the Holy Spirit. As St. Paul says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16).

So there’s an essential relationship between the Beatitudes and the Holy Spirit and our mission. Theologians of the Middle Ages like St. Thomas Aquinas, following St. Augustine, pointed to the link between the Beatitudes and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. It may seem a little artificial at first, but the intuition is sound.

In living the Beatitudes, we’re open to the gifts of the Spirit, while inversely, the Holy Spirit can give us the understanding to practice the Beatitudes fully.

We can consider the Beatitudes one by one and show how they require this work by the Holy Spirit, who alone can make the human heart capable of understanding and living them. Poverty, meekness, tears, the hunger and thirst for God, mercy, purity of heart, fostering peace, joy in persecution—all presuppose a heart transformed by the Spirit.

We can also consider how the Beatitudes point to difficult situations that are opportunities in that they provide an opportunity for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who transforms suffering by disclosing in it the presence of God and God’s Kingdom.

This is one of the fundamental keys to understanding this particular Gospel text. The happiness promised by the Beatitudes is not simply a human happiness or satisfaction, but a visitation of the Holy Spirit, a divine consolation. The Holy Spirit is drawn to the situations and attitudes described by the Beatitudes.

The Holy Spirit comes to rest in a special way on one who is poor in spirit, who is meek, humble, suffering, merciful, and persecuted.

Suddenly, in situations where no happiness can be seen and no satisfaction is sought, there is the surprising gift of happiness—a free gift of the Holy Spirit, the consoler—which descends gently upon each one.

St. Peter speaks of this in his first Letter when he says of persecutions, “If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests in you” (1 Pet. 4:14).

We could show how each of the Beatitudes describes a situation or attitude that prompts an effusion of the spirit on human weakness, an eruption of grace in the life of the person involved.

So the Beatitudes describe the conditions necessary for a person to be fully open to the action of the Holy Spirit: in faithfully following the path outlined by the Beatitudes, each one is open to the work of the Spirit.

The fundamental question of Christian life is how to make oneself fully open to the Spirit and to the action of divine grace. We can accomplish nothing by ourselves. Only the work of the Spirit can transform us and enable us to fulfill our vocation.

We’re told in Scripture, “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail” (John 6:63). From this perspective, the Gospel of the Beatitudes is Our Lord’s response to the question of how we receive the Holy Spirit.

We can say, then, that the Beatitudes are both fruits of the Holy Spirit and conditions for receiving the Holy Spirit. And this is no contradiction. It expresses the circularity proper to the spiritual domain and the mysterious interaction between divine grace and human agency.

We’re told in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that Our Lady is the model of all the virtues (cf. Catechism, Point 829; Vatican II, Lumen gentium, Point 65, November 21, 1964). We could also say that Our Lady is the model of all the Beatitudes.

And each time that we invoke her under the different titles of the Litany, we invoke her also under the title of the Beatitudes.

Mary, Queen of Heaven, pray for us.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW

Editor’s Note: Parts of this meditation were taken from The Eight Doors of the Kingdom: Meditations on the Beatitudes by Jacques Philippe (Scepter, 2018).