“He went up the mountain.” In today’s Gospel, Our Lord ascends what tradition calls the Mount of Beatitudes—not a towering mountain, but a hill above Capernaum overlooking the Sea of Galilee. Yet what matters is not the height of the place, but the meaning of it. In Sacred Scripture, the mountain is a place of encounter with God, a place where God reveals Himself and forms His people.

Again and again the great moments of salvation history unfold on mountains. Moses goes up the mountain and encounters God, who calls him and sends him. Elijah meets God on the mountain, not in noise or display, but in the “still small voice.” Abraham takes Isaac up a mountain, preparing to offer sacrifice to God. And Our Lord Himself goes up different mountains throughout His ministry, and His divinity is affirmed for all to see. Here, as He sits and teaches, the mountain becomes His pulpit. He goes up not merely as a teacher among many, but as the new Lawgiver, the new Prophet, the perfect Priest, and the perfect Sacrifice. He does not simply repeat the old law; He reveals the interior law of grace, the law of the Kingdom.

And His teaching begins with a striking word. In the Latin it is beati—“Blessed are…” These are not pious slogans or sentimental sayings. They are the marks of a soul living in grace, the fruit of the Christian life, a picture of what holiness looks like when the heart truly belongs to God. Each Beatitude builds upon the other. Taken together they form a single path, a spiritual program, a pattern of life in the Holy Spirit.

The Beatitudes are not primarily a set of social directives or a list of worldly reforms. They are something deeper and more demanding: an interior conversion, a new way of seeing, a new way of desiring, the mind and heart of one who lives in union with Jesus Christ. “Blessed are the poor…” This poverty is not a call to theatrical misery, as though holiness meant dressing in rags. It is the poverty of spirit: complete dependence on God. It is the surrender of self-reliance and self-importance. It means that the most important value in my life is not comfort, control, or reputation, but spiritual sonship. I am a child of God, and everything else must be secondary to that.

“Blessed are those who mourn…” The children of God mourn their sins. They are saddened when they fail to live up to their higher calling and appear less than the sons and daughters of God that they truly are. They grieve not because they are hopeless, but because they love God, and therefore they feel the weight of anything that distances them from Him. This mourning is not despair; it is repentance, and repentance becomes the doorway to comfort.

“Blessed are the meek…” Meekness flows from poverty of spirit and humility. It is not weakness, but quiet strength. It is resignation to God’s will and trust in His providence. It is the willingness to endure adversity without bitterness, especially the adversity that fidelity often brings. The meek do not need to win every argument or defend their pride. They remain steady because they know that God will vindicate His own in His time.

Then the Lord speaks of desire: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…” Like the saints, we are meant to hunger and thirst for what is right, for what is holy, for what reflects God. Our true desire in life should be the good, the true, and the beautiful—because these are not abstract ideals, but rays of the light of God Himself. The holy soul is not satisfied with merely “getting by.” It wants God, it seeks Him, it longs to live according to His truth.

“Blessed are the merciful…” As God has been merciful to us, so we are called to be signs of His mercy to others. Mercy is not indifference toward sin, and it is not weakness. Mercy is love that stoops down to lift another up. It is patience, forgiveness, compassion, and the refusal to treat others as beyond redemption. The merciful reflect the heart of the Father, and so the Lord can say to us, “Be merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful.”

“Blessed are the pure of heart…” Purity of heart means more than chastity, though it certainly includes it. Purity is a heart undivided, a heart that is not double-minded, a heart that seeks God without hidden compromise. The pure of heart want God for God’s sake. And the promise given to them is astonishing: “They shall see God.” That is the goal of the Christian life—vision of God, union with God, heaven itself.

“Blessed are the peacemakers…” Christian peace is not merely being polite, avoiding conflict, or keeping things superficially calm. True peace is reconciliation with God. It is the peace that comes when sin is forgiven, when the soul is restored, when hearts are converted. The peacemaker therefore works for the salvation of souls. He helps others return to God, and when God is first, we begin to see one another as brothers and sisters. That is the peace the world cannot give.

And then the Lord speaks plainly of the cost: “Blessed are those who are persecuted…” The persecuted share in Christ’s own sufferings. They stand in union with Him, offering trials and rejection for the salvation of souls. The world has always resisted the Gospel because it resisted Christ first. But persecution is not a sign that the Christian has failed. Very often it is a sign that the Christian is faithful. And the promise is great: “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

To be truly blessed, then, is not to chase earthly comfort, but to allow Christ to form His life within us. The Beatitudes are not merely ideals to admire; they are the shape of sanctity, the pattern of the saints, and the normal path of the Christian who lives in grace. And when this life of the Beatitudes begins to take root, we discover what St. Paul meant when he said, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.”