The Beatitudes-2

Week Twenty-Eight Summary
The Beatitudes: Week Two
Saturday, July 18, 2026

Sunday
The Beatitudes are paradoxical “commandments.” They don’t tell Christians what to do; they tell them what they will be like if they are living in the kingdom:
They will be poor in spirit, pure in heart, merciful and gentle peacemakers; they will thirst for what is right and be persecuted because of it, and they will mourn. —Richard Rohr

Monday
By “the merciful” Jesus means those who have an attitude of such compassion toward all [people] that they want to share gladly all that they have with one another and with the world. —Clarence Jordan

Tuesday
Jesus knows that no human being has a perfectly clean (pure) heart. But in his wisdom, he’s asking, “Are you willing to show up? Are you willing to do the work? Are you willing to clean up your mess?” To answer yes to these questions is to commit to the path. —Carl McColman

Wednesday
Peacemakers don’t avoid conflict; in fact, sometimes peacemaking creates it. We see this with Jesus. —Rich Villodas

Thursday
To live joyfully in the midst of misunderstanding and persecution points beyond our smaller “kingdoms” to the larger kingdom of God. —Richard Rohr

Friday
Maybe Jesus was simply blessing the ones around him that day who didn’t otherwise receive blessing, who had come to believe that, for them, blessings would never be in the cards. Doesn’t that just sound like something Jesus would do? —Nadia Bolz-Weber

Week Twenty-Eight Practice: Practicing the Beatitudes

Peace activist and Orthodox Christian Jim Forest (1941–2022) urges Christians to take seriously Jesus’s exhortation to stay close to those who suffer:

In many bookshops, this book [on the Beatitudes] will be placed in the section labeled “spirituality,” a good word that means living in the Holy Spirit.

These days, though, it often suggests that by adopting the right method of prayer or meditation you will be lifted above the world, its distracting problems and hopeless suffering and enter into the bliss of God (or Buddha or a Hindu deity).

Christian spirituality has nothing to do with losing contact with those who suffer.

A Christian is obliged to see and respond to the real world with all its fear, pain, and bloodstains, to be a rescuer, to protect the defenseless, to participate in the here and now in God’s righteousness. [1]

Forest offers reflection questions about how we are practicing the Beatitudes:

In the Orthodox church, reflection on the beatitudes is often recommended as a way of preparing for confession and communion. Such reflection provides a framework for an examination of conscience about steps not yet taken in our effort to follow Christ:

Do I embrace poverty of spirit—or flee from it at the speed of light?

For whom have I been in mourning?

How meek am I in my response to the gospels?

In what ways am I hungry for righteousness?

How merciful am I regarding those who in some way have done me harm?

How pure is my heart and what keeps it so impure?

In what ways am I trying to purify my heart?

What are the divisions that intersect my life and in what ways am I responding to these divisions as a peacemaker?

What enemies do I love? For which enemies am I praying?

Whose threatened life am I trying to safeguard?

Do I accept persecution as a blessing—or do I avoid anything that might get me into trouble? [2]

[1] Jim Forest, The Ladder of the Beatitudes (Orbis Books, 1999), 69.

[2] Forest, Ladder, 142.