Father Schegg's Commentary on Matthew 5:1-12

 

Mt 5:1 When He saw the crowds, He went up onto the height and sat down, and His disciples came to Him.
Mt 5:2 And He opened His mouth and taught them, saying.

The Evangelist hastens, as it were, to set before us at once the main substance of Christ’s preaching, the fundamental outlines of the constitution of His kingdom which He proclaimed. For this reason he compresses everything lying in between into a few sentences and immediately presents to us the first great, coherent doctrinal discourse of Jesus in the incomparable so-called Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew does not express himself about the time; he does not even hint how long Jesus may have spent on His journeys up to this important stage in His public ministry. We may assume a fairly long period, during which He first prepared disciples and people alike. After they had been, so to speak, trained through many individual instructions, they seemed capable of hearing His teaching once also in its full, comprehensive form.

It has often been asserted that Matthew combined several discourses of Jesus into one; but he at least seems to maintain the opposite. Throughout, he treats the Sermon on the Mount as a unity, and for the time being we are not entitled to depart from this view or to weaken from the outset the emphasis he places upon it. Repetitions and renewed emphases lie in the very nature of Jesus’ manner of preaching. That He taught only in short sayings is a claim often heard but never proven. No teacher speaks solely in disconnected maxims; for everyone it becomes a necessity to express himself summarily about the total content of his teaching, whether in the form of repetitions or in discourses that directly lead the pupil further. The Sermon on the Mount does not exceed the measure of an ordinary instructional discourse, and its content had perhaps already been, in part—indeed for the most part—the subject of His individual sermons. What else should He have preached?

More precisely than about the time, the Evangelist speaks about the place, when he says that Jesus went up onto the height or the mountain. It is not a mountain whose identity Matthew presupposes from tradition—otherwise he would have expressed himself differently—but that mountain whose location becomes clear from the context. Jesus has concluded one of His missionary journeys; both its conclusion and its point of departure is Capernaum. Thus he means the height near Capernaum, as also follows from the events that immediately succeed the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus comes down from the height into Capernaum. To this place—today’s Karûn Ḥaṭṭîn, the Horns of Hattin, somewhat northwest of the Sea of Gennesaret—tradition likewise points, situating Jesus’ sermon in surroundings and with a prospect that has filled all travelers with delight and deep emotion.

We must look once more at the first verse. Despite its simplicity and apparent lack of ambiguity, it has nevertheless often been explained, especially in such a way that Jesus, upon seeing the crowd, withdrew onto a mountain, followed there by the disciples. But this seems incorrect. For if Jesus had wished to avoid the people, He would also have restrained the disciples from following Him. The crowds were anything but timid; they followed Jesus of their own accord onto the mountain as well as into the desert. He would therefore have had to dismiss them explicitly, which did not occur, since at the conclusion of His discourse they are expressly mentioned as listeners: they were filled with amazement at His words.

If, then, we do not wish to assume that Jesus attempted something that did not succeed, we must rather say that Jesus ascended the mountain with the intention of speaking from there to the people. The addition, “and His disciples came to Him,” is not superfluous, for the disciples did not know what He intended. They came forward; they pressed close to Him to learn what they were to do—whether the people were to be dismissed or whether He needed them for something else. From this quite inconspicuous incidental detail it follows that Jesus directed His words to the whole people, not to the disciples alone, as has often been strongly emphasized. Much indeed refers in the first instance to the apostolic vocation, but always in such a way that all the others are included as well. For He regards all His listeners at the same time as His disciples; they have an apostolic calling, as indeed every believer does. He speaks to His disciples, to whom and to whose successors certain teachings are addressed in the first place. He also speaks to the people, to all believers until the end of the world. He speaks here on earth words and doctrines according to which, when He comes to earth a second time, He will judge all human beings.

Mt 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The exclamation “blessed, happy” is very common in Hebrew proverbial speech and connects with the messianic hopes and expectations whose fulfillment the people believed to be near. Proceeding from these expectations, Jesus Christ sets forth in short, two-membered sentences:

1. who will share in the messianic blessedness, and

2. in what it consists—formally, in such a way that He brings both demand and promise into a causal nexus and sets the corresponding beatification over against each individual exercise.

These beatitudes, it is true, constitute the entire messianic blessedness only in their unity, just as the exercises of virtue only in their connection into a whole constitute the capacity for it. Yet a specification lies in the very nature of instruction itself and in the demand for clarity and vividness that one makes of any intelligible teaching. Only in the first beatitude does Jesus Christ seem at first glance to have made a partial exception, in that He links a specific demand with the general promise of the kingdom of heaven, that is, of the messianic kingdom. But even this is only at first glance. For when Jesus calls the messianic kingdom the kingdom of heaven, He has already highlighted a particular aspect—the inner and spiritual nature of this kingdom—and thus has in fact, at least in the eyes of the people, already depicted this kingdom from one particular side, just as He has set forth a demand from the comprehensive capacity required.

Since we know the meaning of the expression “kingdom of heaven” (cf. III, 2), understanding the beatitude itself requires only the explanation of “poor in spirit.” Concerning this, briefly the following.

It belongs to pedagogical wisdom to attach oneself to what is conceded and acknowledged, to clear away false notions connected with it, to remove misunderstandings, and then to build further upon the now-established correct understanding. Jesus Christ here gives us an admirable example of this. For:

1. The nearness of the kingdom of heaven had been proclaimed by John and by Jesus Himself and had been received with faith by the people, as the great crowds that accompanied Him everywhere bore factual witness.

2. According to the prophetic utterances, the promise of the kingdom of heaven applied in a special way to the poor; cf. Isaiah 61:1, “The Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor”; likewise Isaiah 66:2, “Upon such a one will I look: the poor and the contrite of spirit”; Zephaniah 3:12–13, “I will leave in your midst a poor and needy people, and they shall trust in the Lord; they shall be pastured and lie down, and no one shall make them afraid.”

As such poor, the crowds who followed Jesus confessed themselves, bringing their sick and suffering to Him from all sides. Sickness and suffering are the most eloquent witnesses of poverty and misery. On the basis of these presuppositions Jesus Christ now says: Truly, the poor are blessed—or, directly addressing them, since He meant the crowds around Him: You poor are blessed; yours is the kingdom of heaven which I have come to bring—only that you understand “poor” rightly, as the prophets intended it to be understood: they are the poor in spirit, the spiritually poor. If you are that, count yourselves blessed.

With the addition “in spirit,” Jesus Christ does not restrict the expression “poor,” as is often wrongly supposed; rather, He extends it. That the physically poor—the ignorant, beggars, the crippled, the sick, the afflicted, the oppressed—recognized and confessed themselves also as spiritually poor and joyfully heard the words of consolation from the mouth of Jesus is easy to understand, especially given the mentality of that time, which thought of every outward affliction as being in the closest connection with spiritual poverty and distress, that is, with sin. But matters took on a different shape among the fortunate and the wealthy, among the wise of the people, the rabbis and scribes, even though these too recognized their poverty of spirit and what they understood by it.

To be poor in spirit, to be spiritually poor, means to be in a needy and wretched condition with regard to the spirit. This neediness, however, manifests itself according to the two relations of the will and of knowledge. Poor is a weak will infected by evil; poor is a defective and darkened knowledge that leaves the highest questions unsatisfied. Whoever is this—that is, whoever recognizes and confesses it, for one cannot speak of being otherwise—of such a one is the kingdom of heaven, and such a one is to be called blessed, for to remove this poverty and to make him rich Jesus Christ has come.

This spiritual poverty is the inheritance of the natural human being; the awareness of it, together with the consciousness of one’s own guilt, awoke ever more strongly and powerfully in all upright hearts among Israelites and Gentiles alike. From this arose the mighty longing for a transformation, which among the Gentiles remained a dark and anxious yearning, but among the Jews assumed a definite form in their expectation of the messianic kingdom. To this Jesus Christ responds: Whoever bears within himself a longing for the messianic kingdom because of the awareness of his poverty is to be called blessed, for his is the kingdom of heaven.

The first glorious endowment of the human spirit came from heaven; it was lost through sin. Its second endowment can again come only from heaven; it must be bestowed anew from above, in the heavenly blessings of the messianic kingdom. Therefore Jesus Christ says deliberately and emphatically: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land.

This saying of Jesus is taken word for word from Psalm 37:11 and is merely clothed in the form of a beatitude. In its context the passage reads: “Refrain from anger and forsake wrath, lest you do evil; for evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. Yet a little while, and the wicked is no more; though you look carefully at his place, he is gone. But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace” (Ps 37:8–11). And again: “Mark the blameless, and behold the upright, for there is a future for the man of peace. But transgressors shall be altogether destroyed; the future of the wicked shall be cut off” (Ps 37:37–38).

The statement repeatedly expressed by the psalmist in these verses contains two doctrinal elements: a warning and a promise.

First, the warning: not to help oneself by force, not to drive out violence with violence, not to fight wickedness with wickedness, not to use weapons against weapons, and thus to take possession of the land—that is, to enforce one’s rights and claims of inheritance.

Second, the promise: the secure, undisturbed, enduring possession—the sole inheritance—of the land, since the wicked will soon be destroyed and the land will remain to the good, the believing, the faithful alone.

The prophets in particular laid hold of this promise in their portrayals of the messianic future, which they viewed as a time of judgment over all evil and ungodliness on earth. The sinner will be destroyed, consumed by the fire kindled by the wrath of God; only the righteous will remain and possess the messianic inheritance, the world.

At this point the later Jews came to a halt. They thought only of the promise, not of the warning that precedes it and underlies it. As a result, they imagined the messianic period purely as a time of wrath, and themselves as its instruments. Through them the wicked were to be chastised and destroyed; through them divine punitive justice was to be satisfied, so that from then on only righteous, holy friends of God would dwell on earth and take possession of the land. Therefore nothing lay farther from them than the thought that the meek would possess the earth; rather, they counted among these the wrathful, and they had settled into a great bitterness, into a deep hatred of everything non-Israelite.

Over against these prejudices Jesus Christ appeals back to the old, unfortunately forgotten, Davidic saying: The meek shall inherit the land. We may imagine the disposition of the people—which expressed itself more or less openly, but by which all were ruled—applied to the circumstances of that time somewhat as follows: a violent, and as it seemed only too justified, indignation over their situation had seized the whole people. “We have,” they might say, “already suffered insult and oppression long enough from the Romans and the house of Herod. If the messianic kingdom is near, what should hinder us from casting off this yoke, driving out the foreigners, and being used as instruments of divine punitive justice? We are ready to be the rod of anger and the staff of wrath in the hand of God for the destruction of all that is opposed to God, so that the holy may take possession of the earth.” They held such readiness to be a virtue, such willingness to be a demand God made of them.

Against this background the saying of Jesus Christ now receives its full meaning, and therein also its explanation. He says: the victory of the kingdom of God on earth, so far as human agency is concerned, does not depend on the outward force one applies, but on the disposition—and this disposition, as the prophetic singer already indicated, is meekness. The meek will bring the kingdom of God to its victorious unfolding and dominion; they will take possession of the world and fulfill what is written of the Messiah: “He shall rule from sea to sea,” and the godless shall be no more.

This world-conquering virtue is meekness in opposition to wrath and anger, patient endurance in suffering in opposition to impatience, irritability, and despondency, and finally humility in opposition to arrogance, pride, and violence. It is a strength to bear, to endure, to persevere, in trust in God and in the awareness that judgment belongs to Him alone. The victory of the kingdom of God, the overcoming of the world, is certain; but it falls only to the meek, who say: “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we call upon the name of the Lord our God. They collapse and fall, but we rise and stand upright” (Psalm 20:8–9).

Let no one say that through this apparently specifically Jewish interpretation of the beautiful saying “Blessed are the meek,” its universal meaning has been lost. For we too live in the faith that a time will come when there will be only one flock and one fold, and when the godless will have been destroyed. We too live in the expectation of the victory of Jesus Christ. And if so, then, like the Jews, we need instruction as to how this victory is to be won, who will win it and who will contribute to it. For us, as for them, the answer is: the meek.

Whether this exhortation is perhaps superfluous, whether it has lost its significance, or whether it must still be proclaimed and announced with no less urgency, a glance at our own conduct and omissions will teach us. Have the earnest exhortations of the Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Romans 12:10–21 become superfluous for us? If not, then behold: in his words we have the most beautiful explanation of the saying, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Few words suffice to set forth the intimate and beautiful connection between the first two beatitudes. The kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor; its victorious unfolding on earth comes about through the meek. We are all soldiers in the army of Jesus Christ; with Him we must go forth to conquer the world. It is not enough that we possess the kingdom of heaven; we must press it upon all. Behold the weapon that Jesus Christ places in your hand: it alone has conquered the world until now, and it alone will do so henceforth until the end of time. Our battle cry is and remains: Overcome evil with good.

5 Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

This beatitude too rests upon an Old Testament promise: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, to bring good news to the meek, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to those who are bound; to proclaim a year of the Lord’s favor; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, festive garments instead of a faint spirit” (Isaiah 61:1–3). When Jesus Christ read this prophetic passage in the synagogue at Nazareth, He explicitly declared: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). And when John the Baptist sent to Him, at a time when He healed many sick, cast out demons, and granted sight to the blind, He said: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them” (Luke 7:22).

This appeal of Jesus Christ, partly to the promise and partly to His manner of action, shows sufficiently in what sense the expression “to mourn” is to be understood. Jesus understands by it all who are afflicted, suffering, and burdened; all who are sick, miserable, and visited by hardship; all who are in need of comfort—that is, of help—and He says with regard to them: from now on let every suffering cease, let every tear be wiped away; therefore blessed are those who mourn, for the joy after endured suffering is greater than that of one who was never preceded by mourning.

The messianic kingdom, according to the general proclamation of the prophets, consists in the removal of every pain and suffering, of every tribulation, anguish, and distress. Everything that makes this earth a vale of tears will disappear, and even death itself will be no more. Then the Lord of hosts will prepare for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine; and He will destroy the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations; He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from every face (Isaiah 25:6–8).

When we ask about the fulfillment of this promise, we must distinguish the Jewish-ideal standpoint from the Christian-historical one. The former grasps the messianic time only in its consummation and final glorious form, and so too did Jesus Christ speak. Of that intermediate period in which we now find ourselves He does not speak. When this has passed, then the full, literal realization of all that has thus far been fulfilled only partially and in a spiritual manner will come to pass. Yet how far it may already now be said that all who mourn are comforted is easy to recognize. Christianity has entirely removed a thousand evils, and for those that still remain it has taken away the sharpest sting of pain—indeed, it has transformed them into a source of infinite consolation through the gaze directed toward the reward beyond and through the conformity into which we enter, in suffering, with the suffering Redeemer. Only in the right understanding of the word of Jesus, “Blessed are those who mourn,” could a Teresa cry out, “To suffer or to die,” and a Magdalene of Pazzi, “To suffer and not to die.”

Jesus Christ therefore understands by “those who mourn,” first, humanity as a whole, which until now has sighed, suffered, and deeply mourned under the burden of this life; it is to be called blessed, for to all of this He puts an end. But He also means, in particular, those who bear sorrow, who are anxious and oppressed, because to them in the first place the message of the Gospel is addressed, that they may find in it comfort and help.

Mt 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Alongside the longing for bodily consolation and healing there exists yet another, much greater and no less universal longing: for spiritual consolation and healing, that is, for holiness or righteousness. Those too who carry this longing within themselves are to be called blessed, for it will be satisfied. From now on the time begins when “everyone who is left in Zion will be called holy, everyone who is recorded for life in Jerusalem” (Isaiah 4:3); the time when the Lord “will purify the sons of Levi like gold and silver” (Malachi 3:3); when He “will put His law within them and write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33); when He “will sprinkle clean water upon His people and cleanse them from all their uncleannesses, give them a new heart and a new spirit, remove the heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh, and cause them to walk in His statutes and keep His ordinances” (Ezekiel 36:25–27).

To hunger and thirst is an expressive and self-evident figurative expression for an intense desire. Righteousness here is subjective righteousness, that is, rectitude, the full harmony of our being with the divine law and will—what, in reference to this eternal higher will, we call holiness. We may presuppose two things as granted: first, that the human being has within himself the consciousness of being called to holiness without possessing it; and second, that its communication constitutes a principal component of the messianic promises. Jesus Christ unites both in a beatitude: blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, that is, who painfully feel the factual contradiction of their being—their inclinations and their works—against the divine command, against what they ought to be; for from now on their being, their entire nature, will be brought into harmony with the divine will through rebirth in justification, which sanctifies them and makes them righteous and pleasing before God. Their thirst will be quenched, their hunger satisfied.

But Jesus Christ says still more. He proceeds from the principle that even the one already justified hungers and thirsts for righteousness, since it is capable of continual perfection and the contradiction of the flesh always remains, and He answers: even on account of this thirst he is to be called blessed, for he will be satisfied at all times. Grace leads him from victory to victory, from perfection to perfection. It is true that the more abundantly its springs flow, the more powerful the thirst becomes, but this thirst does not torment—it blesses. Therefore the righteous person who thirsts for righteousness is blessed precisely in his thirst and worthy to be called blessed.

Herein lies the progress that this beatitude represents in comparison with the related first one. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” He too is poor in spirit who hungers for righteousness, but the latter stands higher and differs from the former as the one who senses differs from the one who knows, as the one who possesses and yet desires more differs from the one who has nothing.

Mt 5:7 Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

It was not hidden from Jesus that the saying “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” is open to many interpretations and therefore liable to misunderstanding. There were—and the immediate present taught this only too strikingly—even among sincere hearts false desires for, and false notions of, righteousness. Not a few of these had been spread by the Pharisees, who represented the orthodoxy of Judaism, and had been deeply impressed upon people’s minds: for example, hardness, clinging to the letter, an exclusive spirit, carnal expectations of messianic blessedness, and the like.

We may therefore not reject as inappropriate the concrete references that seem to be contained in the following beatitudes to common and prevailing notions, even though, in their ideal universality, they bear a higher—that is, a purely Christian—meaning. Such a double consideration, as it were both the rebuttal of false conceptions and direct positive instruction, is already at work in the saying: “Blessed are the merciful.”

Merciful—or perhaps more aptly, compassionate—is the one who feels another’s suffering as his own and is therefore inwardly driven to alleviate and help where he can, in spiritual as well as bodily distress. First of all, mercy turns toward the outward misery of poverty; how wide, however, the sphere of activity is for spiritual compassion is shown by the self-evident contrast between the friends of David and of Job. The latter did not practice it; how moving, on the other hand, are the consolations of Jonathan. For both forms of mercy numerous exhortations are found in the Holy Scriptures: “Blessed is the man who shows mercy and lends” (Psalm 112:5). “He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will repay him” (Proverbs 19:17). “Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart” (Proverbs 3:3). “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing” (Proverbs 12:18). “Whoever is kind to the afflicted—blessed is he” (Proverbs 14:21). “Open your mouth for the mute” (Proverbs 31:8), and so forth.

Such were the exhortations of the ancients. But the well-known teaching of the Pharisees, that all evils and sufferings are merely consequences of guilt, carried within itself the seed of the most consistent mercilessness: one should not anticipate divine justice. This showed itself only too clearly in the harsh, loveless conduct of the Pharisees themselves. How deeply such notions had taken root even in upright hearts, and how greatly they clouded judgment, we see from the well-known question the disciples addressed to Jesus concerning the man born blind (John 9:2).

Against this principled lovelessness, which brands the natural impulses of compassion almost as weakness, as something sinful and as a lack of zeal for the honor of God, the beautiful saying is directed: whoever shows compassion and love to his neighbor, bodily or spiritually, will partake of that same compassion in the messianic recompense. The messianic salvation is, according to the most explicit announcements of the prophets, a work of God’s grace and mercy toward our misery: “You have not called upon Me, O Jacob; you have been weary of Me, O Israel. Rather you have burdened Me with your sins and wearied Me with your iniquities. I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake” (Isaiah 43:22–25). “For My name’s sake I defer My anger, for the sake of My praise I restrain it for you… For My own sake, for My own sake, I do it, and My glory I give to no other” (Isaiah 48:8–11). “You shall know that I am the Lord when I bring you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers, and when I deal with you in mercy for My name’s sake, not according to your evil ways and your corrupt deeds” (Ezekiel 20:42–44).

Jesus Christ now places the experience of this messianic mercy in a direct relationship to the mercy that we ourselves practice—and rightly so. For whoever has no mercy is receptive to no mercy. True compassion for one’s neighbor has its root and ground in the awareness of one’s own need of mercy and in the desire to share in divine mercy. But whoever asks receives; whoever hungers for righteousness is satisfied; whoever practices mercy—that is, seeks it—will find mercy. Thus mercy is a precondition for participation in the blessings of messianic salvation, since these too, in their very foundation, rest upon mercy, since they are works of divine mercy. For eternally firm and unshakable stands the principle: like for like—what measure you mete out will be measured back to you. Messianic salvation is mercy; therefore, practice mercy.

But note further: Jesus does not posit mercy as a single act, but as a quality, that is, mercy must accompany us—like the thirst for righteousness—through our entire life. It must therefore form the ground and living root of all our actions toward our fellow human beings, just as this is the case with God in His dealings toward us, when He says: Know, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God gives you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people (Deut 9:6).

The application to ourselves and to the saying of Jesus Christ follows of itself. The good land is the kingdom of heaven (cf. above, Mt 5:3). In view of the fact that we daily and in many ways sin and are a stiff-necked generation, and therefore possess no merit, we must practice mercy, so that we may receive out of mercy what we cannot claim by any merit. How deeply must such a word have cut into the flesh of Pharisaic self-righteousness! How decisively did it oppose the false conception of “hungering for righteousness” understood as hungering after merits.

Mt 5:8. Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.

The promise they shall see God offers two aspects to contemplation, which, as I believe, are best illustrated through parallels. One aspect appears to us in Matthew 18:10 in connection with Numbers 12:8; the other in Psalm 16:15 in connection with Isaiah 38:11. Externally, they relate to one another as literal, real interpretation to spiritual, figurative one; inwardly, as cause and effect.

In Matthew 18:10, in connection with Numbers 12:8, when Jesus Christ says: See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven, He attributes to the guardian angels of children a prerogative over other angels. Although all angels see God, yet “to see God” is spoken of as a title of honor only with regard to certain angels who occupy a particularly high rank in the heavenly hierarchy and are nearest to God. They stand around the throne of God; they behold the face of God. Such a distinction the angel Gabriel claims for himself: I am Gabriel, who stand before God (Luke 1:19). Both expressions are identical in their fundamental meaning and differ only in this, that to stand before God designates the relation of service, while to see God designates the distinction and beatitude connected with this relation of service. The Church calls these princes of the angels archangels; they see God.

The same distinction appeared in the lower order of the world in the case of Moses. Of him God Himself bears witness: With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord (Num 12:8). He truly saw God, even though the manner of this seeing remains veiled from us in a holy mystery (cf. Exod 33:18–23).

From this there follows a simple application to the beatitude of the pure of heart. For the messianic future is everywhere presented by the prophets as a time of the revelation of the glory of God, indeed of the divine essence itself. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together (Isa 40:5). The sun shall no longer be your light by day, nor the brightness of the moon give light to you by night; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory (Isa 60:19). Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you (Isa 60:1).

At that time, says Jesus Christ, the pure of heart will stand so near to the God who reveals Himself that it will be said of them, as of the privileged angels, that they see God; that is, they will stand around His throne, be His chosen ones, His intimates, His beloved, and His foremost servants. For God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart (Ps 73:1).

But will God truly be seen? Since the messianic glory entails a transformation of the entire external nature and of our own bodily existence, there can be no doubt that an actual seeing of God will occur, not merely a spiritual experience of divine nearness. The transfigured, spiritual body will see God. I know that my Redeemer lives, cries Job, and from my flesh I shall see God (Job 19:25). What this seeing will be like we do not know; how could we even conceive it in this body of sin? Yet the reality stands firm, just as the faith in the resurrection stands firm.

Then the pure of heart will, in their bodily existence, stand nearest to God. This perfect vision of God in transfigured corporeality has its prelude and foretaste in the spiritual vision of God here below, that is, in the holy tasting and enjoying of God’s nearness, in the experience of blessed communion with God. This too takes place between God and those who are pure of heart. Of them the second word applies to which we referred, the beautiful psalm verse: I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness (Ps 16:15). This word is to be understood in a spiritual sense, of the inward yet true, though mysterious, communion of God with the human person, in which the person—one may say, with body and soul—refreshes himself in the divine likeness, tastes it, or, since inner processes can only be spoken of in images, sees it.

The deprivation of this awareness of God hovered before the pious King Hezekiah, in the face of death, as the most dreadful thing, when he prayed: I said, I shall not see the Lord in the land of the living (Isa 38:11). Something ineffable urges the human being to see God in order to love Him rightly. God also met this longing in the incarnation of His only Son and in the institution of the most holy altar sacrament. Behold the sacrament of the pure of heart, as the Lord has promised: Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.

By “pure,” that is, unalloyed, unmixed, as it were uncolored of heart, are meant those whose interior belongs wholly to God. To grasp the expression in its full and comprehensive meaning, we must note that the word heart is used in a twofold figurative sense, as the seat of intellectual insight and of feeling.

In the first figurative sense, the heart is pure when it acknowledges and recognizes God alone. In this sense the Lord says through the prophet of the messianic future: Then I will give them a heart to know me (Jer 24:7), and again: I will give you a new heart (Ezek 36:26). In this sense the psalmist also prays: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me (Ps 51:12), where the steadfast—that is, faithful, unwaveringly God-directed—spirit forms the explanatory parallel to the clean heart.

According to the second figurative usage, the heart is called pure when it directs all its desire toward God and orders it according to His law. In this sense stands Psalm 24:3–4: Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to falsehood. Here the heart is explained by what follows—soul, desire, longing—as the guiding force of human feeling, which is directed solely toward the good, the pure, the holy, and thus becomes the root and mother of all good and holy actions.

Both together, in union, constitute the true Israelite, in whom there is no deceit (John 1:47), or the generation of those who seek the Lord, who seek the face of the God of Jacob (Ps 24:6), and, as Jesus Christ adds, who see Him.

The most beautiful flower of this pure, unmingled, God-turned disposition, however, unfolds in what we understand in the narrower sense as a pure heart, that is, in the chaste, virginal heart. That the word of Jesus Christ applies to it in a quite particular way scarcely needs proof. In the Apocalypse it is said of the virginal souls: They follow the Lamb wherever He goes (Rev 14:4), as an expressive explanation of they shall see God. The disciple whom the Lord loved, who reclined on His breast and saw God as far as an earthly eye can see, was the virginal John. It is a universally human belief that the pure stand nearest to the deity; purity is the angelic virtue with the angelic privilege of seeing God. All those persons who were thought of as standing in closest relation to the deity lived in abstinence. Nothing holier do peoples know among human beings than virgins, because they are in intercourse with the gods. This sentiment was also so deeply ingrained in Judaism that the priest, as long as he stood before God, had to live in abstinence. What does this say, if not that the pure see God? He who can receive this, let him receive it (cf. Matt 19:12).

Mt 5:9. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

 “Blessed are the peacemakers—or, more precisely, those who make peace (Friedeübenden), that is, those who do and practice what belongs to peace, who therefore bring about peace, preserve peace, found and strengthen peace, and who keep far from themselves everything that is opposed to peace, whether in deed, word, or even in thought. This exercise of virtue has at all times and among all peoples a treasury of proverbs and promises. It is recommended all the more emphatically the rarer it is found in reality, and it presses itself upon the natural consciousness all the more strongly as a duty the less it is practiced. For love and care for peace are found only where there is perfect self-mastery; they most often run counter to our inclinations in moments of sudden agitation. Everyone would like peace, but who acts accordingly? Everything praises peace, but few practice it.

In the same psalm from which Jesus Christ took the second beatitude it is also said: There is a future for the man of peace (Ps 37:37). And in another song David calls out to us: Seek peace and pursue it (Ps 33[34]:15). Solomon says: Joy belongs to those who counsel peace (Prov 12:20). And the wise Sirach exhorts: Stand firm in the way of the Lord, and may the word of peace and righteousness accompany you. The same admonitions run through all the letters of the Apostles. With unmistakable reference to the beatitude of Jesus, the sacred author of the Letter to the Hebrews says: Strive for peace with all, and for holiness, without which no one will see the Lord (Heb 12:14). The Apostle Paul writes: The kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Let us then pursue what makes for peace (Rom 14:17, 19); Brothers, be of one mind, live in peace (2 Cor 13:11); Pursue peace with all who call upon the Lord from a pure heart (2 Tim 2:22). Peter likewise, with explicit reference to the psalm passage, says: Seek peace and pursue it (cf. 1 Pet 3:11–17).

The peace of which the Apostles speak is the harmony of mind among believers and the inward concord of their life, and then also the wise, gentle, quiet demeanor which they show toward unbelievers. The Rabbis too commend peace and concord as a supremely great and blessing-bearing practice, in reference to the beautiful saying: Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity (Ps 133:1). The gentle Rabbi Hillel was accustomed to say: “Be one of the disciples of Aaron, who loved peace and pursued it. He loved people and brought them to the Law” (Pirke Aboth I, 12). And in tractate Peah I, 1 it is written: “Of the following a person reaps the fruits both in this life and in the life to come: honoring father and mother, deeds of kindness, and making peace among people.”

The reasons which moved Jesus Christ to emphasize this virtue in a special way lay, apart from its general importance, partly in view of the hatred and hostility with which the Jewish schools, according to the party to which they belonged, persecuted one another, and partly in the danger that His own disciples might arouse strife and discord. The Rabbis regarded their contentiousness as the virtue of zeal, and such false zeal could all too easily take possession of the hearts of His disciples as well. Hence His exhortation to peace, in which He sets Himself forth as an example when He says: Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart. Further instruction on how this love of peace manifests and proves itself follows later in this same discourse of the Lord.

With regard to the expression children or sons of God, everything depends on whether it is taken in a figurative-moral sense or in a figurative-messianic sense. In the former sense it would mean: they will be called God-like, divine, for likeness is the point of comparison where son is used figuratively in a moral sense. Thus Jesus Christ called the Pharisees sons of the devil because they did the works of the devil (John 8:44), and we too say in everyday life, “He is a true child of his father or mother,” when someone resembles one of them entirely in his conduct. But this is not the primary sense here, because it would contain no promise. The peacemaker does not first become God-like as a reward; he already is so.

The expression must therefore, in parallel with the preceding promises, be taken in the messianic sense, to which they shall be called alone properly corresponds: they shall be called, that is, recognized and named, as children of God. Child of God in the messianic sense means heir of God. The entire promise then reads, with its logical intermediate steps, as follows: the kingdom of God is near; the heirs of the kingdom are the children; but the children of God are the peacemakers.

This promise has the closest affinity with that contained in Mt 5:4, because the exercises of virtue stand in the most intimate mutual relation. Yet it contains more than the earlier one, they shall inherit the land, for the son not only inherits the kingdom or land, but at the same time enjoys everything that belongs to the father: he possesses his love, his protection, his blessedness. From the father everything flows in a natural movement to the son. The whole divine blessedness, insofar as the human being can enjoy it, falls to the peacemaker in the messianic kingdom.

We may say that precisely the moral likeness which exists between God and the peacemaker moved Jesus to connect this special messianic promise with him. The peacemaker is a child of God and will therefore be called so, together with all the blessed consequences of divine sonship in the messianic kingdom. At the same time we see the complete contrast of this beatitude with the expectations and notions of the crowd: not the children of strife, as they imagined, are children of God, but the children of peace; just as not the violent inherit the land, but the meek.

This beatitude received a new meaning through the incarnation of the Son of God Himself. As He assumed our form, so we—here specifically the peacemakers—will assume His form and, transformed into His likeness, appear as true children of God and thus also be named. For in the man Jesus Christ one distinguishes a twofold form: the form in His humiliation, the form of a servant, and the form in His exaltation and glorification, the form of a Son. The former He assumed; the latter we shall assume, according to the words of the Apostle: As we have borne the image of the earthly (Adam), so shall we also bear the image of the heavenly (Christ) (1 Cor 15:49). And again: Our citizenship is in heaven, from where we also await a Savior, the Lord, who will transform our lowly body to be conformed to the body of His glory (Phil 3:20–21).

In this transformation of our body consists the perfect becoming and being children of God. By putting on the form of the Son of God, we appear as children of God and form the family of the heavenly Father, in which Jesus Christ is the firstborn. This transfiguration into the glorious image of Jesus Christ the glorified is promised to the peacemakers because they imprint most perfectly within themselves the image of His humiliation.

10. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

In this beatitude Jesus Christ finally presents the highest and, as it seems, the most difficult demand which the possession of the kingdom of heaven makes upon the human being. It is not enough, He says, to strive for the kingdom of God and to work for it; rather, one must be willing to endure every persecution for its sake, to suffer everything. This sounded unheard-of and incomprehensible. For how should one suffer for the sake of the kingdom—that is, be oppressed, violated, perhaps even killed—for a kingdom which by its very nature overcomes the world, which must everywhere advance victoriously, before which every resistance must come to nothing, and which puts an end to all suffering?

No conception lay nearer to the people, none seemed more firmly grounded in prophetic promise, than that of an irresistible triumphal march of the divine kingdom over the whole world. For where light arises, all darkness disappears; and where God appears, everything ungodly is put to shame. With this expectation the unfolding of the kingdom of God entered into the most direct conflict, in that it did not crush ungodly opposition, but, as it seemed, rather called it forth all the more and provoked a struggle which threatened to drown the holy new community in the blood of its confessors. To this Jesus Christ had to point from the very beginning, and He does so in the beatitude of the persecuted.

According to this assurance of His, the victory of the kingdom of God includes within itself its unceasing struggle against the kingdom of darkness. But since the two kingdoms fight with unequal weapons—blessed the meek, the peacemakers, the poor—the righteous person, to whom worldly weapons are lacking, must be oppressed and often succumb outwardly in the struggle. Blessed is he who takes no offense at this and does not turn back, but perseveres unto death.

That is to say: blessed are those who (1) in their striving after righteousness (v. 6) allow themselves to be turned aside by no opposition, by no obstacle; blessed are those who (2) allow themselves to be deprived of neither the possession of righteousness nor of faith in Jesus Christ by any hostility, dangers, or losses. One can be frightened away from striving after righteousness; one can be discouraged in the struggle for it. Blessed is he who perseveres.

For us this needs no further explanation, for the history of eighteen centuries supplies the most convincing commentary. To His hearers, and especially to the Apostles, Jesus gives the fuller explanation still more often, and above all in His own example, according to the principle that the disciple is not above his master.

The promise theirs is the kingdom of heaven sounds the same as in the first beatitude, but it is to be taken in a different sense, namely in the directly literal sense of heaven or paradise. They, the persecuted, will be carried like Lazarus by the angels into paradise, where they will receive rich reward for all their sufferings.

For a more precise grounding of this understanding of the words of Christ, we may say the following:

1. Already the identical wording must have led one to seek something different here. One found in it a kind of wordplay such as the prophets loved, and which in the mouth of Jesus Christ was all the less surprising, since He expressed Himself chiefly in sayings and parables. Nothing stood in the way of a strictly literal interpretation, since no fixed usage of the expression kingdom of heaven had yet been established. The word was altogether new and therefore capable of manifold application.

2. The Rabbis explicitly taught a rich recompense for all the sufferings and tribulations of the righteous, and indeed in such a way that it would take place immediately after death, not only at the general resurrection.”

 Into Paradise, says the Targum on the Song of Songs (Song 4:12), only the righteous may enter, whose souls are borne there by angels. Rabbi Meïr says: “The greatest thing is peace, for God has created nothing more beautiful than the peace of the righteous.” At the hour when they depart from the world, three choirs of angels go before them in peace (Chetuboth fol. 104, 1; Bemidbar Rabba XI). The beautiful parable of Lazarus provides an example of how even the bodies of the suffering righteous are carried into the bosom of Abraham; and the Rabbis know of several such instances besides (Ida Rabba 1137). Compare further Wisdom IV, 7: “The righteous man, though he die before his time, shall be at rest”; and verse 16: “The righteous live forever, and their reward is with the Lord, and the care of them is with the Most High. Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom and a beautiful diadem from the hand of the Lord,” and so forth. The youngest of the seven so-called Maccabean brothers says: “My brothers, after enduring a short torment, have entered into the covenant of eternal life; but you, through the judgment of God, shall receive the just punishment for your arrogance” (2 Maccabees 7:36).

Jesus Christ Himself explains His words with sufficient clarity when He immediately adds: “for your reward is great in heaven.” That by “heaven” the present, earthly messianic kingdom is not meant, but rather the recompense beyond this life, is shown by the addition: “for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you,” who are now sharers in a great reward. Jesus deliberately chose the expression “kingdom of heaven” instead of “Paradise” or “the bosom of Abraham,” in order to distance Himself from the Jewish imagery of the blessedness of the hereafter and, already in the wording, to emphasize its messianic character (cf. Mt 6:1).

Thus the close connection between demand and promise becomes evident in the simplest way. Righteousness always encounters great opposition; it will still, as it has always been, be persecuted, suppressed, and violated. The course of the world is not altered by this; the period of final victory without further struggle still lies far off. But blessed is he who perseveres, for after a short struggle there follows the recompense beyond this life, until, with the consummation of all things, the recompense in this life will also be added in the resurrection.

The individual expressions require no detailed explanation. “Righteousness” stands here, as above in verse 6, for Christian righteousness, such as faith in Jesus Christ bestows and such as reflects itself in a holy life. “To be persecuted” is used in the widest sense, so that martyrdom is included as well. To be persecuted for righteousness’ sake therefore means: first, to be persecuted because one openly confesses one’s faith; second, because one is faithful and steadfast in observing the divine law and, even in the most alluring circumstances, refuses to commit sin; third, because one distinguishes oneself by innocence and virtue, by fear of God and holiness, and avoids all association with the godless. “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12).

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and exult, for your reward is great in heaven; for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Jesus makes a specific application of the final Beatitude to the Apostles, because suffering and tribulation were the first things they were to experience. Instead of “for righteousness’ sake,” He says “for my sake,” because righteousness consists precisely in faith in Him. He recognizes no other righteousness—neither Pharisaic nor philosophical self-righteousness. Had the Apostles preached from themselves, they would not have been persecuted; for human words are fought with human weapons. But since they preached in the name of Jesus, that is, claimed an immediately divine authority for their words and confirmed it by miracles and signs, words were no longer sufficient to combat them. The ungodly world therefore had recourse to those means which, besides words, are still at its disposal: the stirring up of passions, violence, and calumny. To all three forms of hostility against divine truth Jesus alludes in the words: revile, persecute, speak evil—suspect, slander.

The individual clauses of Mt 5:12 stand in a close causal connection: “Rejoice, because…” “Great is your reward, for…” The third clause grounds the second, and the second grounds the first. That the reward of the prophets is great, Jesus regards as an established fact; upon this He builds His further conclusions. Great is the reward of the prophets; just as great is yours, because you are persecuted for the same cause for which they were persecuted. Therefore rejoice and exult that you are persecuted. Do not regard your vocation as something dreadful and terrifying, something you must submit to against your will, but—because of the glorious reward attached to it—as an object of joy and exultation.

This latter point is of particular importance. The prophets often approached their difficult office with fear and trembling. “Ah, Lord God,” cried Jeremiah at the outset, as though recoiling from God, “behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth” (Jer 1:6). So too the Apostles might have thought, when they heard the words, “Blessed are those who are persecuted,” “Blessed are you when people revile you,” and fear and despondency might have seized them. Jesus seeks to prevent this by presenting their vocation, despite the sufferings that lie ahead, as an enviable and desirable lot, in view of the splendid and great reward in heaven (cf. Hebrews 11:26: “He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he looked to the reward”; 2 Timothy 4:7–8: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day”).

The Church rightly appeals to Mt 5:12 in her teaching on the meritoriousness of good works as a proof-text. For reward presupposes merit; otherwise it is not reward. If suffering and tribulation borne for Christ’s sake were not meritorious, how could Jesus Christ say, “Rejoice and exult”? Can a person rejoice in suffering which by its very nature brings him no gain? The conditions for the meritoriousness of a good work (cf. Mt 6:1-4 and following) do not concern us further here. We are concerned only with the good work itself and with the consequence inherent in it, namely merit, which Jesus Christ solemnly assures and confirms under the exhortation to joy and exultation.

From the preceding exposition there result eight Beatitudes, the last of which Jesus Christ repeats and explains with a special reference to His Apostles. Mt 5:11-12 already reveal themselves as an addition through the change in form of address, whereas the preceding eight sayings, through their complete uniformity, present themselves as a coherent whole. This alone speaks against the assumption, popular in more recent times, of only seven Beatitudes, an assumption which in general arose from a failure to recognize the distinctive character of Mt 5:10 and its close connection with the whole. One is indeed fond of laying particular stress on the significance of the number seven; but where the matter itself speaks, form must yield. Truth transcends mere numerical combination, however dazzling it may appear; moreover, numerical symbolism in the New Testament—apart from the Apocalypse—recedes almost entirely into the background.

CONTINUE