HW: The secret of flourishing according to Jesus.

A reflection on the Beatitudes in Matthew's Gospel for Sunday 1st February 2026. Written and spoken by Kieran J. O'Mahony OSA. 

Gentle piano music to close the meditation

Transcript

John’s Lane
D08 F8NW
1 February 2026
The Beatitudes

Welcome
When we find ourselves confronted with such exalted teaching as the Beatitudes, perhaps the best place to begin is with our own experience. Happiness, by its nature, eludes definition but a description might be possible. We could each ask ourselves: who are the people I know you are really happy, who are truly flourishing and simply good?

In my own experience, the really happy people tend to show three marks. Such people are unusually “integrated” — the inside and the outside are one person, what you see is what you get, both in terms of values and life story. Secondly, without song and dance, such people a firmly other-centred. It really is not all about me. Finally, in my experience, such people live by a higher vision and set of values, usually undergirded by faith. Such a triad is in stark contrast to the more usual “settling for less”, a risk at any time in history and perhaps especially in our day. The temptation to distraction and what we may call merely sentient, “externalised” existence is strong.

Topic
Some such gathering in of our own experience can help us enter into the 8 or 9 happy sayings, which open the Sermon on the Mount.

Steps
You may have noticed that not all the beatitudes are the same. Some of them are wisdom sentences along the lines “if you do this, this will happen.” The clearest example is: “Happy the merciful: they shall have mercy shown them.” It could be easily expanded: happy the kind, happy the generous — such people generate and receive kindness in return.

You also have what we may call the reversal beatitudes. These are unexpected from a common sense point view: happy the poor in spirit, happy the gentle, happy those who mourn. At first glance, it would seem these are not based on experience but on faith in a God who is or will be ultimately loving and just. These apocalyptic beatitudes go against the grain — holding up a quite different way of looking at life. As RS Thomas puts it in his poem The Kingdom, there are quite different things going on,   

And finally, in Matthew, there are, what we may call, contextual beatitudes reflecting directly on the challenging experience of being a believer. Beatitudes 8 and 9 are good examples: “Happy are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.” There is a corresponding woe: ““Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”(Luke 6:26 NRSVue) In these contextual beatitudes, the shock value is high.

As the French say, it gives rise to thought. Curiously, the Sermon on the Mount was an important discovery for Mahatma Ghandi, the great Indian leader and spiritual teacher. He saw it as a great spiritual guide for living peacefully with all humanity. Likewise, the present Dalai Lama has expounded the Sermon on the Mount, in a Buddhist perspective. I am personally glad of such overlaps, even if the risk is turning Christian faith chiefly into a spirituality of ethical behaviour. Nothing wrong with that, of course, except it is limiting.

Matthew does not teach the Sermon on the Mount as a detached programme for good living. On the contrary, in his view, the Sermon and perhaps the Beatitudes in particular are firmly rooted in the person, mission and destiny of Jesus. Jesus lived the Beatitudes before he taught them and so they provide, in their own way, a thumbnail sketch of who Jesus was. Precisely because the Beatitudes were first lived by Jesus they then constitute a pattern for his followers, then and now. Just as Jesus’ identity is embedded in the Beatitudes, so is ours, if only we dare to look at ourselves and see how we could be. 

Conclusion
It could easily seem that the Beatitudes are indeed highly exalted, otherworldly, and therefore beyond us. That is why I began by inviting a reflection on truly good people that we have known. We have not here an impossible ideal but on the contrary the path to blessedness, happiness and flourishing, open to all. Instead of settling for less, we should lift up our sights and see the greatness that God dreams for each one of us. God does not want us to be reasonably good, reasonably happy, reasonably loving. Even that is setting for less. He wants us to be unreasonably good, insanely happy, and irrationally loving.

Let us pray
O God, teach us the hidden wisdom of the gospel, so that we may hunger and thirst for holiness, work tirelessly for peace, and be counted among those who seek first the blessedness of your kingdom. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen