Day 233: The Beatitudes (2025)

Discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home, this is day 233. We're reading paragraphs 1716 to 1729. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach. And you can follow along.

along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own catechism in a year reading plan by visiting Ascension Press dot com slash CIY and You can click follow or subscribe in their podcast app for daily updates.

And daily notifications today is day two thirty three, paragraphs seventeen sixteen to seventeen twenty-nine. Yesterday we talked about the dignity of the human person, and the dignity of the human person being, in so many ways, the basis for Catholic morality, that man is made in the image and likeness of God.

I don't know if you remember this. You know, twenty-four hours ago. Maybe, maybe it's even days ago. If you, you know, missed a couple days. That's okay. You're here today. But we recognize that. Paragraphs seventeen oh one to seventeen oh nine was basically almost almost like a gospel presentation, right? Here's God who's good, he made man in his image and likeness.

intellect, will, we have all that. Then sin happens, and yet at the same time we still recognize the voice of God and we still recognize our high call. God gives us through Jesus Christ and the Father, the Holy Spirit, the power to be able to do good, to be good. Now, today. The next step, article two, is our vocation to beatitude. And so we're gonna talk about the actual beatitudes. We're gonna look at the ones from Matthew's gospel, and then also our desire for happiness.

So beatitude in many ways, you can translate that as blessing, you can translate that as happiness. The beatific vision is that happiness vision, right? The happy vision of heaven, the blessed vision of heaven that God has made us. For himself. And God alone satisfies you. This is so so critical for us to understand. God has made us for himself.

He alone satisfies, and yet, because of concupiscence, remember that big word, because of our attraction to sin, we think that other things, because our intellect is darkened and our will is weakened, we think that other things will make us happy. Yet, yet God's call to us. To himself, God's call to us, to true happiness, to true beatitude never ceases. And so that's what we're gonna talk about today. So let's pray and ask the Lord to help us to choose him today. Not just

By listening to these words, but by by choosing him with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, loving him with everything. So we pray. Father in heaven, we ask you to please send us an abundance of your Holy Spirit so that we can truly love you with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, that we can love you with everything. Lord God, the world presents to us.

So many alternatives to goodness, so many alternatives to truth, so many alternatives to true beauty. We ask you to please help us to choose you, help us choose the truth. Help us to choose beauty, help us to choose goodness.

So help us to choose you. God, you will never abandon us. Help us to never abandon you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It is day two hundred and thirty-three. We're reading paragraphs seventeen sixteen to seventeen twenty-nine. Article 2. Our vocation to beatitude. The Beatitudes.

The Beatitudes are at the heart of Jesus' preaching. They take up the promises made to the chosen people since Abraham. The Beatitudes fulfilled the promises by ordering them no longer merely to the possession of a territory, but to the kingdom of heaven. As Jesus said to Matthew's gospel, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you, when men revile you and persecute you, and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. The Beatitudes depict the countenance of Jesus Christ and portray his charity. They express the vocation of the faithful associated with the glory of his passion and resurrection. They shed light on the actions and attitudes characteristic of the Christian life.

They are the paradoxical promises that sustain hope in the midst of tribulations. They proclaim the blessings and rewards already secured, however dimly, for Christ's disciples. They have begun in the lives of the Virgin Mary and all the saints.

The desire for happiness. 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 man to the one who alone can fulfill it. As Saint Augustine wrote. We all want to live happily. In the whole human race, there is no one who does not assent to this proposition, even before it is fully articulated. Later on, Saint Augustine further said, How is it then that I seek you, Lord?

Since in seeking you, my God, I seek a happy life, let me seek you so that my soul may live, for my body draws life from my soul, and my soul draws life from you. Saint Thomas Aquinas stated God alone satisfies. The Beatitudes reveal the goal of human existence, the ultimate end of human act.

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. Christian Beatitude The New Testament uses several expressions to characterize the beatitude to which God calls man.

The coming of the kingdom of God, the vision of God, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, entering into the joy of the Lord, entering into God's rest. Saint Augustine further stated, There we shall rest and see, we shall see and love, we shall love and praise. Behold what will be at the end without end? For what other end do we have if not to reach the kingdom which has no end?

God put us in the world to know, to love, and to serve Him, and so to come to paradise. Beatitude makes us partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life. With Beatitude, man enters into the glory of Christ and into the joy of the Trinitarian life. Such beatitude surpasses the understanding and powers of man. It comes from an entirely free gift of God, whence it is called supernatural, as is the grace that disposes man to enter into the divine joy.

Saint Irenaeus stated, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. It is true, because of the greatness and inexpressible glory of God, that man shall not see me and live, for the Father cannot be grasped. But because of God's love and goodness toward us, and because He can do all things, He goes so far as to grant those who love Him the privilege of seeing Him, for what is impossible for men is possible for God.

The beatitude we are promised confronts us with decisive moral choices. It invites us to purify our hearts of bad instincts and to seek the love of God above all else. It teaches us that true happiness is not found in riches or well being, in human fame or power, or in any human achievement, however beneficial it may be, such as science, technology, and art, or indeed in any creature. But in God alone, the source of every good and of all love. John Henry Newman stated.

All bow down before wealth. Wealth is that to which the multitude of men pay an instinctive homage. They measure happiness by wealth, and by wealth they measure respectability. It is a homage resulting from a profound faith that with wealth he may do all things. Wealth is one idol of the day, and notoriety is a second. Notoriety or the making of a noise in the world, it may be called newspaper fame, has come to be considered a great good in itself and a ground of veneration.

The Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Apostolic Catechesis describe for us the paths that lead to the kingdom of heaven. Sustained by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we tread them step by step by everyday act. By the working of the Word of Christ, we slowly bear fruit in the church to the glory of God.

In brief, the Beatitudes take up and fulfill God's promises from Abraham by ordering them to the kingdom of heaven. They respond to the desire for happiness that God has placed in the human heart. The Beatitudes teach us the final end to which God calls us, the kingdom, the vision of God, participation in the divine nature, eternal life, filiation, rest in God. The beatitude of eternal life is a gratuitous gift of God. It is supernatural, as is the grace that leads us there.

The Beatitudes confront us with decisive choices concerning earthly goods. They purify our hearts in order to teach us to love God above all things. The Beatitude of Heaven sets the standards for discernment in the use of earthly goods in keeping with the law of God. All right, there we are. Paragraphs 1716 to 1729. We have this is as we said article two, our vocation to beatitude. So hopefully if we know what the term beatitude means, again, that blessing, that happiness, the

The ultimate good to which God has called us to, right? That that's i if you want to say it in so many words, it's not just happiness, right? It's not just blessing,'cause those words are good, those words are powerful, those words

are inadequate though. It's a the ultimate good to which God is calling us, right? The the ultimate blessing to which God desires for us, the ultimate happiness that God wants for us. And so keep that in mind, because we use the word beatitude quite a few times in the last number of minutes.

today. So and this all springs from the Sermon on the Mount, right? Here's Jesus who says these are the thing called the Beatitudes, right? The blessed are those. Happy are you who are poor in spirit. Happy are those who mourn. All these things.

that comes from this core teaching of Jesus. You know, this Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five. He goes on to talk about the other ways that we're called to live in the kingdom of heaven, but it starts here with these words of blessing, these words that depict, as it says in paragraph 17, 17, the countenance of Jesus and portray his charity. And this is I I love the fact that the church makes the connection between here's the God's promises to Abraham.

Right. Pri he promises a worldwide blessing. He promises dynasty. He promises land. And here's Jesus saying, Okay, that's fulfilled in these words. That's fulfilled in the kingdom of heaven. That's fulfilled in him. And I just thought that's so incredible. And at the same time, the beatitudes, as it says here, are very clearly paradoxical promises that sustain hope in the midst of tribulation. That's just real, right? Because how did the Beatitudes end?

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake. Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad your reward will be. is great in heaven. There is this reality that blessing and happiness, I mean true happiness, deep happiness, is not the fleeting happiness of mere pleasure.

The Beatitudes, as it says in seventeen eighteen, respond to the deep, deep natural I'm adding the word deep, but the deep natural desire for happiness. And yes, there's levels of happiness. There's the the immediate, right? There's the sense pleasure, like I have

good food to eat. I I got I got to rest my eyes or whatever the thing is. There's sense pleasure. There's different levels where like, okay, now I've I have an accomplishment. I have recognition. I I've succeeded in something that was difficult. That's another level of happiness. I've helped someone else. Another level of happiness. But what God is talking about here and Christ is talking and the church is revealing to us.

is not just those levels. In fact, Saint Augustine, this these quotes he heard from Saint Augustine three times today. He says, We all want to live happily. In the whole human race, there is no one who does not assent to this proposition, even before it's fully articulated. Now, St. Augustine's story, if you know anything about St. Augustine's story, that his mom was Catholic.

But Augustine had ran far away from that. And Augustine had checked out all these different philosophies, all these different other attempts at religion, and he finally came To know who Jesus is. He finally came to believe in Christ, came to know the Catholic Church. In his book Confessions, he he has this prayer, and this is a little excerpt from this prayer where he says, How is it then that I seek you, Lord?

Since in seeking you, my God, I seek a happy life, let me seek you so that my soul may live, for my body draws life from my soul, and my soul draws life from you. And this profound reality that every one of us, what have what have we been doing for the last two hundred and thirty three days?

We've been longing for for the Lord. It's not just, again, let's go back to this. It's not just about I want to know what the words are in the catechism. Or if we went through the Bible, I want to know what the words are in the Bible. It's about so much more than that. It's about, I want to know you, God. Because as St. Thomas Aquinas had made it very, very clear: God alone satisfies.

And so the whole goal of human existence, which is that that God has calls us to himself, right? Remember that's our destiny, our destination, that he wants us all to choose. That that beatitude is life with him, eternal life with him, because he's the only one that satisfies.

Now, uh paragraph seventeen twenty one. The I would just want to highlight a couple quick things before we conclude today. Paragraph seventeen twenty one. It it is so good. It's a throwback. So apparently in the Baltimore Catechism. One of the first questions was Who made you? And the answer, God made me. The second question, why did God make you? And the answer is God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this life so as to live with him forever in the next.

Look at paragraph seventeen twenty one. It's so good. God put us in the world to know, to love, and to serve him, and so to come to paradise. I'm like, wow that's Going back to the Baltimore catechism, so good, so consistent, and so beautiful, because God wants us to know him, to love him, to serve him, and to spend eternal life with him. Now at the same time,

1723 makes it so clear that here is here's your end. Here's the goal. Here's what God wants for you. He's going to give his grace. He's going to give all his goodness. He's going to give every opportunity for you and I to choose him. And he wants that goodness. He wants that fullness of life. Paragraph seventeen twenty three highlights though that the attitude we are promised confronts us with decisive moral choices.

We have to choose it, just like we've been talking about. Here's good and evil. Here's life and death. Here's here's darkness and light. We get to choose. This confronts us with decisive moral choices. The Beatitude invites us to purify our hearts of bad instincts and seek the love of God above all else. Now think keep that in mind. Again, bad instincts, what's the fancy word? Concupiscence, right?

To seek the love of God above everything else. This next section is just so powerful. It teaches us that true happiness is not found in riches or well being. But how many times a day do we live for accruing wealth? How often do we strive for even for health? But we know that true happiness is not found in wealth or in health, in human fame or power.

Or any human achievement like science, technology, art, any creature, but God alone, source of every good and all love. You know, I can list those things like it's listed here: health, wealth, fame, power, science, technology, art, any other person. But if we don't apply those to our hearts, they're just they're just kind of words, right?

It's one of the reasons why I think it's good to r re know that okay, where I spend my time is where I place my heart. Where I spend my money is where I place my heart. And if I find myself, and this is you know my own self-examination, if I find myself saying, Oh, I gotta I gotta make sure I work out today, or I gotta make sure that I I'm saving up this money to do whatever the thing is, whether that's to buy something or to just simply save it to feel secure.

But I'm not willing to take time to always make sure I'm I'm praying in a way that Gets me closer to the Lord. Or I'm not I I'm not trying to to make sure that I I use whatever money I have to help the people around me, then there's a big question of like, wait, what do I love most? This quote from John Henry Cardinal Newman that we read in seventeen twenty three is is just I mean, he he was alive quite a few years ago.

And yet his words are, as they say, prescient, right? They they they are ahead of his time, and we recognize that from all time, this is what's in our hearts. It says All bow down before wealth. Wealth is that to which the multitude of men pay an instinctive homage. Isn't that so interesting? It goes on to say, they measure happiness by wealth. And by wealth they measure respectability.

And this next line, it is a homage resulting from a profound faith that with wealth he may do all things. That's it, that's an act of faith. That it there's this this homage, I bow down before wealth. I I want to seek after this, I want to achieve it, I want to accomplish this, I want to or gain it, you know, get it for myself, because with wealth I believe I may do all things. He goes on to say, wealth is one idol of the day, notoriety is a second.

Oh my gosh, how crazy is this notoriety or the making of a noise in the world? Maybe called newspaper fame. We might call it Instagram fame. Because there's literally that. Someone's like Instagram famous or they're YouTube famous or whatever the kind of thing is. that has become to be considered a great good in itself. This is so long ago that John Henry Cardel Newman had said these words, long before the invention of the internet, long before the invention of quote-unquote influencers.

Because the human heart has this, right? This lives in all of us. I mean we used to call it, you know, getting ink in the paper, right? If you if you're in high school and like and doing sports or high school and you're in band or inquire or did something significant, you you know you got ink, your name in the paper. And this is just in our hearts.

We have many decisive moral choices. What comes first? What gets my heart above everything else? Is it going to be the Lord or is it going to be anything else? The rest of our time as we continue to to walk through this third pillar of the catechism is is gonna highlight this. What gets my heart, what gets my attention, what gets my time, what gets my money, what gets me? Is it God or anything else?

Man, such a important question that we need to ask regularly. Such an important question we need to answer regularly. And I hope that my answer is always gonna be Okay, God, you're first. No matter what else there is in my life, God, you first. And I I again that's what I want with my life. Hopefully, with God's grace, you and I can choose that with our lives.

It's very difficult though. And so we need grace, we need help, we need prayers. That's why I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.