blessed

This Sunday’s reading from the Gospel According to Matthew 5:1–12 (NABRE) contains the Beatitudes, which are an especially profound and difficult section of the New Testament. Each begins with the phrase “blessed are…”. (I might choose to render this as “prosperous are…”.) The grammatical structure of the Beatitudes comes into Greek from Hebrew via the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. For an example of how this structure shows up in the Old Testament, see Psalm 1:1.

This connection to the Old Testament complicates any translation of the Beatitudes because they rely on a Hebrew formula that employs Greek words. The common translation is blessed. Before reading on, pause for a moment to think about what it means for someone or something to be blessed.

Is your answer anything immaterial? If so, you may have missed some of the intended contrast in the Beatitudes. The Hebrew concept of blessedness derives from the Old Testament view that God’s favor and blessing were readily apparent by material success. If you were rich, God had blessed you. I like the translation “prosperous” because it restores this intended tension between material and immaterial in the Beatitudes.

So what’s going on in the Beatitudes? It seems to me that Jesus is redefining prosperity not in present terms but rather in terms of the future. Jesus appears to be suggesting that if we do certain difficult or unpleasant things now, we’ll prosper at some future time.

related topics: beatitude; blessing; favor with God

you also may like our study of the Gospel According to John
The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth, a 25-lesson Catholic Bible study with an imprimatur, examines the Fourth Gospel’s view of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, with special emphasis on the institution of the sacraments of the Church as the means by which Christians are purified and made holy. This recently revised study includes maps and additional commentary, and takes a closer look at the way in which Jesus relates to individual men and women. Click here to view a sample of the first lesson.

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