Today we read this Gospel so familiar to all of us, yet always so surprising. In this passage of the Beatitudes, Jesus offers us a way of life, a set of values that, according to Him, are what can truly make us happy.

Happiness is surely the main goal we all seek in life. And if we were to ask people how they try to be happy, or where they look for their own happiness, we would find very different answers. Some would say in a well-grounded family life; others, in having health and work; others, in enjoying friendship and leisure; and those perhaps most influenced by our consumerist society would say in having money, in being able to buy as many things as possible and, above all, in rising to higher social levels.

These Beatitudes that Jesus proposes to us are not, precisely, the ones our world today puts before us. The Lord tells us that “blessed” will be the poor in spirit, the meek, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness… (cf. Mt 5:3–11).

This message of the Lord is for those who want to live attitudes of detachment, humility, a desire for justice, concern and interest for the problems of their neighbor, and who place everything else in the background.

How much good we can do by praying, or by practicing fraternal correction, when we are criticized for believing in God and for belonging to the Church! Jesus tells us this clearly in His final Beatitude: “Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me” (Mt 5:11).

Saint Basil says: “The rich man is not yet to be envied for his riches; nor the ruler for the weight of his office, nor the strong man for the robustness of his body, nor the wise man for the abundance of his speech. For these are instruments of virtue for those who use them well, not possessing blessedness in and of themselves.”