The Beatitudes: Matthew 5:3–12, What Each One Means, and a Prayer for Each

Jesus sees the crowds, goes up the mountain and sits down, the posture of a teacher, and his disciples come to him (Matthew 5:1). This is what he teaches first, in the World English Bible, Catholic Edition:

³“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. ⁴Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. ⁵Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. ⁶Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. ⁷Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. ⁸Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. ⁹Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. ¹⁰Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. ¹¹“Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake. ¹²Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

— Matthew 5:3–12 (WEBC)

Matthew has nine sentences that begin “Blessed”, but Catholic teaching counts eight Beatitudes. Verses 3 to 10 are eight blessings in the third person, each with its own promise, bracketed by the Kingdom of Heaven. Verses 11 and 12 then turn to “you”: they take the eighth Beatitude, persecution for righteousness, and apply it directly to the disciples listening, “for my sake”. So the ninth sentence is the eighth Beatitude spoken to the reader.

Luke gives the Beatitudes in a different setting and a shorter form. Jesus comes down with the Twelve and “stood on a level place” with a great crowd (Luke 6:17), which is why this is called the Sermon on the Plain. Luke 6:20–26:

²⁰He lifted up his eyes to his disciples, and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for God’s Kingdom is yours. ²¹Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. ²²Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude and mock you, and throw out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake. ²³Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven, for their fathers did the same thing to the prophets. ²⁴“But woe to you who are rich! For you have received your consolation. ²⁵Woe to you, you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. ²⁶Woe, when men speak well of you, for their fathers did the same thing to the false prophets.

— Luke 6:20–26 (WEBC)

The Catechism places the Beatitudes at the start of its teaching on the moral life, under the title “Our Vocation to Beatitude”. Its points, in its own order:

• They are the heart of Jesus’ preaching, and they fulfil God’s promises to Abraham by ordering them “no longer merely to the possession of a territory, but to the Kingdom of heaven” (CCC 1716).
• They portray Christ. They depict his face and his charity, and they “have begun in the lives of the Virgin Mary and all the saints” (CCC 1717).
• They answer the desire for happiness that God himself placed in every human heart, to draw us to the One who alone can fulfil it. “God alone satisfies” (CCC 1718, quoting St. Thomas Aquinas).
• They reveal the goal of human life: God calls each of us, and the whole Church, to share his own happiness (CCC 1719): the Kingdom, the vision of God, entering the joy of the Lord and his rest (CCC 1720, 1726).
• That happiness is a free gift, beyond our own powers, and so called supernatural (CCC 1722, 1727).
• They confront us with decisive choices. True happiness is not found in riches, fame or power, “or indeed in any creature, but in God alone” (CCC 1723). They purify the heart “to teach us to love God above all things” (CCC 1728), and set the standard for how we use earthly goods (CCC 1729).
• They are a path, walked “step by step, by everyday acts”, together with the Ten Commandments and the apostles’ teaching (CCC 1724).

The poor in spirit are those who know they cannot save themselves, and so stand before God with open hands. It is not a love of misery. It is freedom from the need to be self-sufficient, and from making security out of possessions. Pope Francis connects it to Christ, who “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor” (2 Corinthians 8:9), and sums it up: “Being poor of heart: that is holiness” (Gaudete et Exsultate 67–70). The promise is in the present tense: the Kingdom is theirs already.

This covers grief for those we have lost, sorrow for our own sins, and the sorrow of seeing the world as it is and not looking away. The world, Pope Francis writes, “has no desire to mourn” and averts its gaze; the one who mourns lets suffering touch them, and so can weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15). “Knowing how to mourn with others: that is holiness” (Gaudete et Exsultate 75–76). The comfort promised is God’s own, not the forgetting of what was lost.

Meekness is not weakness. It is strength that does not need to dominate: the refusal to answer pride with pride, and patience with other people’s limits, as Jesus is “gentle and humble in heart” (Matthew 11:29). “Reacting with meekness and humility: that is holiness” (Gaudete et Exsultate 71–74). The promise echoes Psalm 37:11, “the humble shall inherit the land”: the earth belongs in the end not to those who grab it but to those who can receive it.

Hunger and thirst are the strongest desires the body knows. To want righteousness that much is to want God’s will done, in my own life and in the world: honest dealing, justice for the poor, the defense of those who have no defender. “Hungering and thirsting for righteousness: that is holiness” (Gaudete et Exsultate 77–79). Luke keeps the plain sense too: “Blessed are you who hunger now”. The promise is that this desire will not be mocked.

Mercy has two sides, Pope Francis writes: giving and forgiving. It is the Beatitude closest to the Our Father’s “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”, and the one with the most symmetrical promise: the merciful receive mercy. “Seeing and acting with mercy: that is holiness” (Gaudete et Exsultate 80–82). The works of mercy, feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, forgiving injuries, are this Beatitude put into practice.

A pure heart is an undivided one: simple, without duplicity, loving God and others with nothing held back for show. It includes chastity, and it is more than chastity. The promise is the greatest of all, and the Catechism puts it at the center of what heaven is: the vision of God (CCC 1720). “Keeping a heart free of all that tarnishes love: that is holiness” (Gaudete et Exsultate 83–86).

Not the peace-lovers, but the peacemakers: those who do the work. That rarely means avoiding conflict; it means building peace where there is none, and refusing gossip, contempt and the easy satisfaction of taking sides. “Sowing peace all around us: that is holiness” (Gaudete et Exsultate 87–89). The promise is a family name: they will be recognized as children of the God of peace.

The last Beatitude returns to the promise of the first. It names what happens when the other seven are lived: the world does not always welcome them. Pope Francis notes that persecution today comes sometimes by the shedding of blood, as for so many contemporary martyrs, and sometimes by slander and lies, or by mockery of the faith. “Accepting daily the path of the Gospel, even though it may cause us problems: that is holiness” (Gaudete et Exsultate 90–94). Verses 11 and 12 turn this to the listener, and add the word no one expects: rejoice.

That the happiness everyone looks for is real, and that it is found where the world does not expect it. The Beatitudes turn ordinary measures of a good life upside down: the poor, the grieving, the gentle and the persecuted are the blessed ones. They are not rules for earning heaven. They are a description of Jesus himself (CCC 1717), and of what life becomes when he lives in someone. And they are promises: each one ends with what God will do.