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THE BEATITUDES
The Gospel according to Matthew focuses on the figure of Jesus, the new Israel. Jesus fulfills the promises made to the ancient people in his person. The Evangelist Matthew, in fact, presents the fulfillment of the Scriptures in the person, life, and public ministry of Jesus. His narration, as we have already seen, is organized around five great discourses, with narrative sections and two framing elements: the introduction, written as infancy narratives, and the conclusion, with the passion, death, and resurrection of the Lord. The first two chapters narrate scenes from the Savior’s childhood. Chapter 3 begins the history of the public ministry.
The first two chapters are unique to Matthew; they elaborate on the school of scribes who produced the first Gospel. Starting with chapter 3, the synoptics perfectly agree on the narrative: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Mark begins the narrative with the preaching of John the Baptist, while Luke and Matthew present the infancy narratives. Still, Matthew goes his way, and Luke goes his way. They have nothing in common.
The three synoptic evangelists proceed in common from Chapter 3, reflecting the previous ecclesial tradition. This means all three synoptics have worked the apostolic material, probably already in writing and transmitted orally in established ways. The evangelist is a writer and an editor. We are talking about the final editor, who has compiled uneven material, creating links and adding, removing, and rearranging to produce a homogeneous story according to the theological intentions of each evangelist.
In chapters 3 and 4 of the Gospel of Matthew, we see the re-presentation of the scheme common to the synoptics. It begins with the preaching of John the Baptist, the arrival of Jesus at the fords of the Jordan, where he is immersed and baptized, and then the withdrawal intothe desert to choose the correct way to act as the Messiah. In the temptations common to Matthew and Luke, Matthew presents a didactic scene in which the three temptations are synthesized. Jesus responds with three quotations from Deuteronomy, the book that recounts Israel’s situation in the desert, where the ancient people had failed. The new Israel, who is Jesus, triumphs, chooses well, and does not give in to temptation but selects the way of God. He then returned to Galilee and began his ministry.
Matthew adds a quotation from Isaiah to emphasize, as was his custom, that “Thus was fulfilled what was announced by the prophet Isaiah: The people who lived in darkness saw an intense light.” According to Matthew, it is the people of Galilee who, upon hearing Jesus’s preaching, finally saw that the light and a new possibility of salvation had arisen. The first disciples enthusiastically followed the Master’s call. Jesus begins to teach and heal, and we come to chapter 5, where the first great discourse begins.
It begins with what is called ‘the discourse of the mountain’ and occupies chapters 5, 6,and 7. The first of the five critical programmatic discourses summarizes the Gospel’s novelty. Therefore, chapters 3 and 4 serve as a narrative introduction, followed by an extensivediscourse. In chapter 7, the discourse ends with an editorial formula with which the evangelist writes: “When Jesus finished his discourse, the crowd was amazed at his teaching.” “When Jesus finished his discourse” is a formula repeated five times, marking the end of each of the five parts. Thus, chapter 7 concludes the first part.
From 3 to 7, we have a unitary block of narratives, words, and speeches attributed to Jesus. This is an important textual clue. It indicates that Matthew, the evangelist, worked editorially to gather the material according to his criteria, so the whole mountain discourse was edited. One can’t think of a single discourse pronounced by Jesus in a single circumstance. It is not an organic discourse but an anthology of sayings.
Jesus’ preaching was naturally repetitive and phrased in short sentences. Just think a little to understand the reasons for that. Jesus was not a teacher who taught in a school and did not always have the same audience; therefore, he could not carry out a program that started with the first lesson and developed the discourse in many subsequent meetings.
His itinerant preaching ministry led him to continually change his audience and locations. He encountered different people, and people from other areas came to look for him because they had heard of him, so he had to continually start over from the beginning. He could not simply continue the discourse; instead, he repeated the more critical elements. The essential message was proposed and repeated numerous times. This is also important because there was a faithful group, and the disciples who followed him were always present.
While the crowds changed, the disciples remained constant. They had heard the same speeches countless times and, by listening, had memorized them. These words were deeply fixed in their memory. However, it is understandable that repetitive, oral preaching, often saying the same things, ended up with varying expressions, images, and constructions, so it is also easy to understand why there may be small nuances of variation.
The second characteristic of Jesus’ preaching is the use of short, memorable sentences that attract attention, imagination, and interest. Let’s not forget that the ancients had no means of amplification, so speaking to a large crowd outdoors is especially difficult.
You cannot deliver a peaceful speech in a normal tone for long. To speak in public, in the open air, for a long time, you need to raise your voice, almost screaming, and if you try to do something like that, you soon realize that the sentences should be short. They become proverbial phrases of the message. They are slogans, so Jesus’ preaching is schematized in this way. The announcement to the crowds is made through formulas, proverbs, and principles of wisdom. Well-constructed in the original language, they had to be rhythmic, maybe even rhymed, with puns, just like our proverbs, so those who heard them were surprised and easily memorized the phrase. And repeating what Jesus had said, it was easy to rephrase two or three sentences pronounced by the Master.
This also favored memorization among the disciples, thus creating the apostolic tradition; that is, the apostles remembered the teachings of Jesus, and after his Passover, death, and resurrection, they began to recount what he did and repeat what Jesus said. They shaped the narrative episodes and the sayings, the ‘logia.’ Each of these ‘logia’ was a reality in itself. By ‘logion,’ we mean a word, a phrase, an expression, an image, or a unitary saying, not inserted in a narrative episode but a separate phrase.
The disciples first memorized many of the sayings and then repeated them orally before compiling written collections. When the evangelist Matthew writes his Gospel, he has a wealth of material at his disposal; these are the ‘logia’ (Greek: λόγια; plural of logion [Greek: λόγιον]): the sayings of the Lord. The evangelist publisher took passages from this extensive oral or written anthology and arranged them into an organic discourse. Thus, he produced the five discourses that structure the first Gospel.
We have said that the discourse of the mountain begins in chapter 5. In this remarkable three-chapter anthology, the evangelist Matthew collected many ‘logia’ and performed editorial work, organizing traditional material and giving it a particular structure that makes those sayings the programmatic discourse of Jesus. The beatitudes constitute the great portal of this discourse.
Let’s read the beginning of chapter 5: “When he saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The list of the eight beatitudes continues.
The introduction, therefore, recalls the mountain. Jesus went up the mountain, so wetraditionally call it ‘the discourse on the mountain.’ The geographic detail has theological significance. It is not mentioned simply because Jesus climbed a mountain as a note describing the landscape, but rather to make a theological reference to the Old Testament. The mountain par excellence is Sinai.
The Lord descended the mountain to meet with Moses and, as mediator, to give him the covenant and the law for Israel. Some say that in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is portrayed as the new Moses who gives the new law. This is different from Moses, who climbs the mountain to receive the law. Jesus, on the other hand, goes up the mountain to give the law. Therefore, Jesus does not appear in the role of Moses but in the role of God himself. Jesus is wisdom in a person who sits as wisdom enthroned—the Master par excellence. The disciples approach him. In any case, the disciples play the role of Moses approaching Jesus to receive his revelation.
The mountain is the symbolic place of the encounter with God. The discourse on the mountain reveals Jesus as the Lord who does not simply give a new law but brings the covenant to fulfillment and performs what has already been given. Now, he provides fulfillment and novelty in his person. The Beatitudes are an anthology compiled by the apostolic tradition. We also find a list in Luke with only four, while in Matthew there are eight. This suggests that the first evangelist has particularly emphasized this text.
We need to determine whether there were 4 or 8. Perhaps there were many more, as when, in preaching, Jesus used the proverbial form of the beatitudes many times. It is a technical expression; it is a way of congratulating. We also use the adjective ‘happy’ many times in exclamations. ‘Happy you’ – ‘Happy you all’ because something vital happened that I appreciate, admire, and congratulate, ‘I congratulate you’ for how lucky you have been.
The important element of the Beatitudes is not the qualification of people: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, but the promise, the cause that determines the Beatitude. You are blessed not because you are poor but because the kingdom of heaven is yours. The vital element is that the kingdom of heaven is yours. This is the Gospel. God, the almighty king, Lord of heaven and earth, is on your side: “Blessed are you….” In the other formulas, we often find a passive future: ‘You will be comforted,’ ‘You will find mercy,’ and ‘You will be satisfied.’ The action of God through this “divine passive” is emphasized. God will comfort them, make them heirs of the earth, and treat them with mercy.
The work of God in favor of humankind, which begins now and lasts for eternity, is the reason for happiness. You are fortunate and happy because the Lord is on your side, comforts you, leaves the earth to you as an inheritance, satisfies you and your lives, and treats you with mercy. God shows himself to you and calls you his sons and daughters; he adopts you, and you are part of the family. These are the reasons for happiness. These formulas are a synthesis of the Good News that is the Gospel.
The first part, therefore, does not constitute a moral duty. It does not mean that one must be poor to enter the kingdom. It would be absurd to say that one must be afflicted or should be prosecuted for the sake of justice—it would make no sense. The Beatitudes are not moral duties but conditions that can occur.
To understand the Beatitudes well, we must value the kerygmatic aspect, that is, the fundamental message proclaimed by Jesus. Jesus proposes an essential content: what God does; consequently, humans can live a certain way.
Since God is on our side, we can recognize our poverty; it is not about becoming poor. It is about acknowledging it. Poor in spirit is the awareness of one’s poverty and limits. We can also face afflictions and be meek: we don’t need to fight because the Lord leaves the land as our inheritance. We have everything we need. We can stop fighting. Above all, we can seek God’s justice: hunger and thirst for his will. We can be merciful because the Lord treats us with mercy and communicates such great love that makes us capable of loving. We can be pure of heart, simple, transparent, and clean, looking only to God because God makes himself visible. We can work in peace and build good relationships because we have also become children of God. We can also face any persecution because the almighty king of heaven and earth is on our side.
The discourse on the mountain begins with this splendid announcement of happiness made possible by God’s action, and it is the synthesis of the Gospel of Jesus: Blessed are you because the Lord is on your side. You can be happy.