Our Venerable Father Isaac, Hegumen of the Dalmatin Monastery (406-25)
Romans 1:1-7, 13-17; Matthew 4:25-5:13.
Read Matthew 4:25-5:13
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
In lots of parishes, the congregation sings the Beatitudes during the Sunday Divine Liturgy. And even in parishes where that isn’t the case, we can read the Beatitudes in our liturgy books. One of the problems with this is that, as the old saying goes, “familiarity breeds contempt” – or, put a different way, constantly repeating a prayer can sometimes obscure its power. And that’s important, because the Beatitudes are intended to be shocking and powerful.
The first three Beatitudes are the most shocking – no one, in either our society or the ancient world that Jesus was preaching to, wants to be poor in spirit, mourning, or meek. Yet those are the values that Jesus calls blessed. This tension between what Jesus sees as the most blessed way of living and the priorities of the world continues in the rest of the Beatitudes until the dissonance reaches a climax in the last phrase – “Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you.” Who wants to be the target of such hostility? The straightforward answer is “no one.”
What could possibly make this an appealing way to live? Ultimately, it’s only because we see Jesus in the Beatitudes that we can possibly imagine trying to apply them to our own lives. Jesus the one who is truly meek, truly a peacemaker, truly persecuted for his righteousness. Then, he turns all the evil he bears on its head, and in his death and resurrection, makes it possible for us to experience similar suffering and still love, still rejoice, still give thanks to God. It’s because of his poverty that we can walk through the Beatitudes and find blessedness.