Beatitudes, Blessed

Sermon on the Mount after James Tissot (1836-1902), Brooklyn Museum

The Beatitudes take their name from the Latin beatitudo (happiness) and are part of the great inaugural sermon of Jesus that Matthew and Luke report differently (-):

• Matthew reports nine beatitudes and Luke five, which he complements with four opposites ("Woe to you") that respond mutually: Poor/rich; The Hungry/filled; tears/laughter; hate, insults/speak of Good. He does not mention four beatitudes of Matthew: the meek, the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers.
• Moreover, Matthew uses a more spiritual language than Luke who speaks in a more material sense of hunger, tears, and insults. Matthew speaks of the “kingdom of Heaven” (expression unique to this gospel) whereas Luke speaks of the “kingdom of God”.
• Matthew places Jesus’ discourse on a mountain and Luke on a plain.

The beatitudes respond to the natural desire for happiness. This desire is of divine origin: God placed it in the Heart of man to attract him to Himself who alone can fulfill it. And to do so, God calls us to his own beatitude. "Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven," concludes the Gospel. Blessed is the one who possesses the Kingdom of God in eternity, and on earth is like the first fruits through his union with Jesus Christ.

In Maria Valtorta

While the evangelists’ accounts occupy 20 verses (13 in Matthew, 7 in Luke), Maria Valtorta’s narrative spans 7 pages. This is one of the many examples where Maria Valtorta’s detailed description restores, in their coherence, apparently contradictory gospel accounts. Indeed:

• This discourse takes place in a location that is both "plain" and "mountain." This location has been identified as the Horns of Hattin situated on the edge of the Via Maris, a trade route already mentioned by Isaiah. It is the true location of the Beatitudes, combining both the "mountain" described in Matthew 5:1 and the "plain (or flat ground)" cited by Luke 6:17.
• The teaching is intended to be spiritual, but is based on the material life as experienced by the listeners.
• In his development, Jesus draws a parallel between the law of Grace and mercy he inaugurates and the law he fulfills of the Ten Commandments accompanied by severe warnings.-
• The Kingdom of Heaven (the Paradise) is indeed the described reward, but Jesus uses once the term "Kingdom of God" not as equivalent to Paradise, but to signify union of God with pure hearts.

In "The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me"

The Beatitudes

As the length and density of the Sermon on the Mount reported by Matthew suggests, Jesus’ teaching lasts six days in Maria Valtorta’s account. It is delivered near the lake of Tiberias in the spring of the 2^nd year of public life (likely March/April). The beatitudes are given in the second sermon, after a preliminary teaching on the Mission of the Apostles and Disciples.

Whereas the familiar phrasing "Blessed are you…" creates a distance between the Teacher who teaches and those who listen, Jesus here uses "I" which includes himself as one who practices the beatitudes he teaches. Below are the nine Beatitudes from Matthew 5:3-11 in the order the evangelist transmitted them, but in a formulation that is clearly not a simple transcription of the biblical text.

[...] When, through my mediation, I have brought you to my Father, and through the outpouring of my blood and through my suffering you have become pure and strong, Grace will return alive, awakened, powerful in you, and you will be overcomers, if you wish.

God does not force you in your thinking nor in your sanctification. You are free. But He restores to you the strength. He frees you from Satan’s domination. It is up to you to take back the infernal yoke, or to give your Soul the wings of an angel. It all depends on you to take me as brother so that I may guide you and feed you with an immortal food.

"How to conquer God and his Kingdom by following a gentler way than the severe path of Sinai?" you ask.

There is no other way; there is this one. But let us not look at it from the perspective of threat, but from the perspective of love. Let us not say: "Woe if I do not do this!" while trembling in fear of sin, of being unable not to sin. But say: "Blessed shall I be if I do this" and with a rush of supernatural joy, happily, let us rush towards these beatitudes, which arise out of observation of the Law just as roses arise from a thorn bush.

• Blessed if I am poor in spirit, for then the Kingdom of Heaven is mine!
• Blessed if I am meek, because I will inherit the Earth!
• Blessed if I am able to weep without rebelling, for I will be comforted!
• Blessed if, more than bread and wine that satisfy the flesh, I hunger for righteousness. Righteousness will satisfy me!
• Blessed if I am merciful, for I will enjoy divine mercy!
• Blessed if I am pure in Heart, for God will look upon my pure Heart, and I will see Him!
• Blessed if I have the Spirit of Peace, for God will call me his son, for I will be in Peace and in love, and God is the Love who loves the one who is like Him!
• Blessed if, faithful to righteousness, I am persecuted because to compensate me for the persecutions of the earth, God will give me the Kingdom of Heaven!
• Blessed if I am insulted and falsely accused for being your son, O God! This must bring me not desolation but joy, for it will place me on the level of your greatest servants, the Prophets, who were persecuted for the same reason and with whom I firmly believe I will share the same reward, great, eternal, in the Heaven that belongs to me!"

Let us thus consider the path of salvation through the joy of the saints. 

In other chapters

• In the Kingdom of Heaven shall be blessed those who have honored the Lord with truth and righteousness [...] To them belongs the Kingdom of Heaven.
• Blessed also are those who will see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired fervently to see what you see and have not seen it. and
• In my various beatitudes I stated what was necessarily required to attain them, and the rewards that will be given to these blessed. But if the categories I named differ, the reward is the same if you look at Good: I and God are of the same things.

In other works of Maria Valtorta

The Notebooks of 1943

• Catechesis of August 12, 1943: Oh! Beatitude of beatitudes too little known: to live with me who knows how to love! If Peter exclaimed on Mount Tabor, only because he saw me transfigured: ‘Lord, it is good to be here with you,’ what should the Soul say that has itself been transfigured by becoming a molecule of my Heart of God?
• Catechesis of September 18, 1943: The beatitudes I proclaimed, you will have them already on this earth if you do the will of your Father. Then, in Heaven, they will be seventy times greater, because then nothing will hinder your fusion in God.
• Catechesis of December 25, 1943: The seven beatitudes opposed to the Trials.

In fundamental Christian texts

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church

CCC 1716 The beatitudes are at the Heart of Jesus’ preaching. Their announcement resumes the promises made to the chosen people since Abraham. It fulfills them by ordering them no longer to the sole possession of a land, but to the Kingdom of Heaven:

• Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

• Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

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

• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

• Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

• Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

• Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

• Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

• Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

• Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.

Debated points

In his preliminary discourse, Jesus proclaims:

"Grace is love. Grace, therefore, is God. It is God who, admiring himself in the creature he created perfect, loves himself there, contemplates himself there, desires himself there, gives himself what is his own to multiply his possession, to be born from this multiplication, to love himself in so many beings who are other than Himself.”

And a little further on:

"Divine, divine, divine cisterns of Love! That is what you are, and to your being death is not given, for you are eternal like God, being God. You will exist and your being will know no end, because immortal like the holy spirits who have overfed you, returning in you enriched by your own merits. You live and nourish, you live and enrich, you live and form this very holy thing which is the Communion of spirits, from God, Most Perfect Spirit, to that very little one who is just born and takes the maternal breast for the first time."

Being God: on a typed copy, Maria Valtorta refers to the following Scripture passages--. She explains by the following note the expression so many beings who are other than himself employed above:

"St Thomas Aquinas rightly says that God could not have made greater divine works than the three he made: the Incarnation of his Son, the Maternity of the Virgin and the deification of the human Soul. And St Augustine writes: “Souls are divinely associated, through the Father, to the mystery of eternal generation, and through the Father and the Son, to the breathing of the Holy Spirit (editor’s note: the act by which the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son in the Christian Trinity).” Therefore, the Soul deified by Grace is divinized by participation in the three divine Persons: this is the masterpiece of infinite Love who raises us from the state of creature to that of divinized creatures."

This commentary by Maria Valtorta was made later as she reread, for publication, the initial vision (which she never corrected). However, the citation from St Thomas Aquinas is not literal but relevant. Arnaud Dumouch, specialist in the "Angelic Doctor," comments on this subject: "I have heard this citation attributed to St Thomas Aquinas but I have never been able to find it in the entirety of his works: it is therefore possible that it is apocryphal, though it is quite intelligent." Likewise, the citation from St Augustine seems extracted from his work "De Trinitate" (The Trinity), but from several chapters. It is therefore a citation from a reference author speaking on these subjects. Consultation of the books composing her library leads to the very well-known work of Mgr Francesco Olgiati (1886-1962): Il sillabario del Cristianesimo. He was nicknamed "the apostle of the supernatural.*