On the other hand, the disciples of Jesus “know how to question themselves, how to humbly seek God every day, and this allows them to delve into reality, grasping its richness and complexity.”
Vatican City (15/02/2022 4:00 PM, Gaudium Press) Last Sunday, February 13, in his address to the faithful pilgrims present in St. Peter’s Square before the Angelus prayer, Pope Francis dealt with the passage from the Gospel of Luke that deals with the Beatitudes.
Addressing the first Beatitude: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God,” the Pope said that human joy is not found in possessions, but in the gifts, we receive from God each day, such as life, creation, our neighbour. The spirit of poverty is to know that “Jesus’ disciples do not think about possessing it, about already knowing everything, but rather they know they must learn every day.”
When one does not follow Jesus, it is easy to fall into sadness “because the accounts do not add up, because reality escapes their mentality and they find they are dissatisfied.” On the other hand, the disciples of Jesus “know how to question themselves, how to humbly seek God every day, and this allows them to delve into reality, grasping its richness and complexity.”
The Beatitudes are a path to happiness
The disciple of Christ accepts ‘the paradox’ of the Beatitudes’: “they declare that those who are poor, who lack many goods and recognize this, are blessed, that is, happy. Humanly speaking, we are inclined to think in another way: happy are those who are rich, with many goods, who receive plaudits and are the envy of many, who have all the certainties. But this is a worldly mindset, it is not the way of thinking of the Beatitudes! Jesus, on the contrary, declares worldly success to be a failure, since it is based on a selfishness that inflates and then leaves the heart empty.”
To allow oneself to be guided by the Beatitudes is to know that “it is not God who must enter into our logic, but we into his.”. Following the beatitudes can be tiring, but it is a journey that is always accompanied by joy:“Let us remember, the first word Jesus says is: blessed, beati, which gives us the name of the Beatitudes. This is the synonym of being disciples of Jesus. The Lord, by freeing us from the slavery of self-centredness, breaks our locks, dissolves our hardness, and opens up to us true happiness, which is often found where we do not expect it to be,“ emphasized the Pontiff. (EPC)
Compiled by Gustavo Kralj
