The First Sermon: The Beatitudes

This evening I will as usual attend a vigil mass in the local Roman Catholic Church. It will be "Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time" and the Gospel: Luke 6.17,20-26. Here are some notes from my "Bible Alive" notes (www.biblealive.co.uk).

"Blessed are they who..."

In an interview with a radio journalist a group of ordinary teenagers from an ordinary comprehensive school were asked: "What do you want out of life?" They all replied, "We want to be rich and famous."

Their assumption was that this was the way to be happy and fulfilled. St Augustine taught: "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." Another great thinker St Thomas Aquinas reflected in a similar fashion: "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."

So, for the Christian, the key to happiness is not money, fame or wealth but God. God is our true treasure and in God we find true happiness. Cardinal John Henry Newman, a towering prophetic figure, spoke the following words a long time before TV, the worldwide web and celebrity culture had taken hold: "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 for veneration."

How true and prophetic his words were then and remain today! The Beatitudes turn the values of the world upside down - the happy, the blessed, are those who are poor(in spirit and in material terms), who hunger and thirst for righteousness(literally), and who suffer insult, rejection and contempt from others because of their faith in Jesus. Our vocation is basically a daily invitation to live the Beatitudes - to put them into practice, step out in faith and live by them. There is no other way to happiness - living the Beatitudes is the way to the life and life to the full.

"God is more anxious to bestow his blessings on us than we are to receive them." (St Augustine of Hippo)