The Savior opens his
great sermon on the mount with a series of pronouncements that have come to be
known as “The Beatitudes.” The
beatitudes consist of a litany of traits that essentially describe Christ
himself and thus represent the attributes of a true disciple (or follower) of
Christ. The word “Beatitude” is derived
from the Latin adjective beatus,
“which means ‘to be blessed’ or ‘to be happy or fortunate’” (Ogden &
Skinner, 2006).
The great religious
writer Matthew Henry observed that happiness is highly sought after by “a blind
and carnal world” and that some even pretend to pursue blessedness, but he
laments that “most mistake the end, and form a wrong conception of happiness;
and then no wonder that they miss the way.
The general opinion is, Blessed are they who are rich, and great, and
honourable [sic] in the world; who spend their days in mirth, and their years
in pleasure; who eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and carry all before them
with a high hand” (Henry, 1992).
This warped conception
of happiness is in fact nothing more than an illusion and those who subscribe
to the world’s definition of happiness are sure to be sorely disappointed when
they realize that riches and pleasures can only be fleeting and that they can
provide no meaningful or lasting happiness or joy, nor can they possibly confer
a state of blessedness upon those that heedlessly seek after them.
With His Beatitudes,
the Savior presents His disciples with His definition of what it means to be
happy, and what it truly means to be blessed.
In doing so he presents us with what some have called “the constitution
for a perfect life” (Lee, 1975). In this he presents us with a series of
attributes which characterize the life of a disciple, characteristics from
which a happy life can be composed.
Significantly each characteristic described in the beatitudes represents
an attribute of Christ’s own life and personality, and thus the beatitudes form
a sort of template or pattern upon which we are to model our own lives if we
truly seek to follow Christ to the eternal happiness which He has promised each
of us. In order to be truly happy we
have to learn how to ‘be’ like the Savior in all that we are.
Christ was deliberate
in placing the Beatitudes at the beginning of his sermon. Christ seeks to lift
our gaze to a higher goal-a more excellent way, as it were. If the Sermon on
the Mount is a road map to happiness and righteous living then the beatitudes represent
the destination. As mentioned before, the word 'beatitude' comes from the Latin
'beatus', which means happy, or blessed. The beatitudes are therefore not
criteria by which disciples are defined and others are excluded. Rather, they
represent the qualities of true happiness and contentment, the dimensions of a
life filled with joy. By these we are meant to learn how to recognize behaviors
that lead to joy, in contrast to others that can only lead to unhappiness or
misery.