Video Transcript

Edmund Mitchell: Hi everyone, and welcome back to The Real and True Podcast. I’m one of your co-hosts, Edmund Mitchell.

Emily Mentock: And I’m Emily Mentock, your other co-host.

Edmund Mitchell: And we’re really excited today. Do not go to another episode because we are talking about the Beatitudes and we’re talking about practical ways to apply these to catechesis and evangelization and our experience. This is a little bit of a different episode. Instead of having a guest on, we’re going to be talking about our own experience interacting with the content and the Beatitudes, and also the things we’ve been learning and ways that we can apply this in ministry. So Emily, I’m really excited for this episode because I feel like obviously we’re interacting with this content and it’s having an effect on us. And we’re faithful Catholics and we’re trying to live a life in Christ, but there are times where certain units in particular are challenging in a good way, I think. Would you agree?

Emily Mentock: Yeah, that’s right. I can think back on multiple times in the past several years of working on this project where there’s something that I’ve encountered in a new study of the Catechism that we do to prepare for writing the scripts and animating the videos and prepping our podcast run-of-shows, I’ve sort of seen in a new way and that has changed my understanding of the faith that then goes and impacts how I live my own personal life. And I know that that’s happening for people who watch the videos too, because of the comments that we get on YouTube or on Instagram or things like that. But this unit that we’re in—the Beatitudes—was one of those where when I was working through this unit, I realized that I had completely misunderstood what the Beatitudes were. And not necessarily because I was taught incorrectly, but I just never understood really how important and how central to Jesus’ teaching the Beatitudes are. So I just wasn’t properly placing them and where they should be in terms of my life, in pursuit of holiness, and pursuit of trying to live like Christ because I didn’t understand really what they meant for us as Christians and as followers of Christ.

Edmund Mitchell: Same. Yeah, same. And I think I remember hearing Dr. Peter Kreeft talk about in Lectio Divina, in scripture, but it also applies here in the Catechism. When you’re hunting, you don’t just stay on the well-worn paths or the areas that you go to a lot. It can be easy to just go to the Church teachings or the parts of scripture where it’s like, “Oh, I love these parts. These are easy for me to understand.” He talks about you got to go to the bushes you haven’t explored yet; to the areas of the forest that are more difficult. And when we come across parts in the Catechism that it’s like, “Ah, I don’t know about this,” that actually might be a good sign to dive deeper. And I have the same experience with this; with the Beatitudes.

I remember when we first started talking about these scripts and ideas, I was like, “To be honest, Emily, I just have glossed over the Beatitudes. They just seem like a list. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” I’m like, “Ah, okay.” Or “Blessed are those who mourn.” I’m like, “Alright, cool. I’ll keep that in mind,” but then I just kind of forget about it. And I wonder if you feel this. I think this is true; that other people might have that same experience. Even people that are in the Church who their job or their ministry is to teach the faith. I’ve had that experience. A lot of us are just like, “Yeah, the Beatitudes are great,” and then we move on. But the Catechism says it’s central to Jesus’ preaching.

Emily Mentock: Right. I think one thing that I personally misunderstood about the Beatitudes is that I thought that they were sort of just a message of hope and good faith for those who sort of experience grief, or experience persecution, or experience injustice, that they were meant to just be an offer of hope. Like “If these things happen to you, then don’t worry. In heaven, you’ll be rewarded.” But that’s not at all what it is. It’s actually a call. The Beatitudes are a call to all of us. They are the invitation to, in our pursuit, to live like Christ. They’re totally different than the Commandments because they are actually what take us to living like God, seeing like God, and modeling Christ’s example, and not something that you just sort of receive passively. It’s the exact opposite of that.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah, yeah. So the Catechism is this over and over again. Throughout the whole Catechism, it’s this, in a way, it’s this book of blessings. God’s plan is this plan of blessing. The very first paragraph is “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in Himself, in a plan of sheer goodness, freely creates man to share in His blessing.” And then “beatitude,” this word that means “blessing;” this divine blessing that we’re going to receive. And I love how in this unit we’re talking about the Commandments. We have had a phone call where we were talking through some of this stuff and we were talking like, “How do we make this different than the Commandments?” Maybe you could just share that kind of realization we both had of like, “Yeah, the Commandments are this way, but the Beatitudes are this way.”

Emily Mentock: Yeah. So one thing that we learned in our unit on the Commandments is that the Commandments are an expression of natural law. One of the reasons why we can cherish them as a gift from God is because He just takes something that we all could use our reason to come to understand. But because we are human and we have a tendency for confusion or could be misinformed; we’re just fallen. And that’s true for all of us. God gave us the gift of being very clear: “This is what not to do. This is not what I mean when I say to follow me and to live in the way that I created you to live.” But the Beatitudes are not natural law. They are really more divine. They come from Jesus and they are an invitation to see things not in our human way; not in natural law; not in any way that our human minds could comprehend without God revealing it to us. They require grace because this is God’s way of happiness. And it actually is an invitation to happiness. I think the other big misconception that people have, and especially if you sort of relate the Commandments and the Beatitudes, is thinking that they kind of are also wrapped up in a morality and a list of dos and don’ts and how just to be good. But it’s not about pursuing just good, but it’s actually about pursuing God’s happiness and God’s vision for the world.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. We were talking about how the Commandments, you could kind of understand, “Okay, I want to be happy. God is going to have this plan for me to help me be happy and be good. And so if I don’t murder and I don’t steal and I don’t lie and I don’t commit adultery, I’ll be happy.” But then you hear Jesus say, “No, but blessed are those who mourn for they shall be happy.” And you’re like, “Some of these things are very counterintuitive. Like blessed are the pure in heart. Okay, I get that.” But “Blessed are those who are persecuted.” And this idea that Jesus presents a way of happiness that’s counterintuitive. At first,, like for me, it was like, “Okay, well. If I’m ever in that situation, I’ll remember this and remember that I’m blessed.”But it’s actually the fact that it’s counterintuitive, like you’re saying, that implies that we need grace to live this out. Not that it should be confusing, but it should kind of confront us with this kind of “How do we live this out?” And I hope that when people are listening to this podcast and watching the videos, that they’re paying attention to— not that we’re perfect, but I think we do a really good job of this— what we’re trying to do is good evangelization, good catechesis; where we’re trying to say, “How do we present God’s divine revelation in a way that makes sense; in a way that draws people in and points them to Jesus and God’s plan of loving goodness for them in light of Christ?”

And so in these videos; in the scripts, we’re not always saying it explicitly. Sometimes it’s the way we’re showing things; the way we’re visually telling things that are really important. A lot of thought goes into that. And I hope that people can use that to think about ways in their own ministry and catechesis and evangelization to be meditating on these things. And the good that comes of that; the fruit that comes of that kind of creative prayerful, “How do we present this in the best way?” And so I want to move into talking a little bit about the Beatitudes, but start with this conversation we had around the creative direction and what you did to help the animation team and us really show this differently so that people walk away feeling the Beatitudes and not just knowing it intellectually.

Emily Mentock: Yeah. One line that really stood out to us when we were preparing for this is paragraph 1726, where the Catechism is telling us what do the Beatitudes do? “The Beatitudes teach us the final end to which God calls us: the kingdom, the vision of God, participation in the divine nature, eternal life, filiation, rest in God.” But what really stood out to us there was the vision of God, and that in our pursuit of the Beatitudes, and when we cooperate with the grace that we need to act them out we are seeing the world as God sees them. So again, in the Commandments, it’s telling us what not to do; how to avoid evil, because that will certainly make us unhappy. That will not be good for us, not be good for our souls, not good for the world.

But if we actually want to bring God into this world, or see the world as God does, or live as Christ lived, then this vision of God that has been revealed to us is the Beatitudes. So I’ll just explain in a couple places where we see that in the video. So #1, in the Proclamation video, we’re talking about something that has been shown through research; that sometimes the pursuit of happiness can actually make us unhappy. Basically, every way we try to pursue happiness by any worldly standard, you’re always going to come up short and feel unhappy again. Because any happiness that you achieve will either not be lasting or will become your new, neutral state. So the visual throughout the video was people looking in a library; looking for happiness.

And at the end, all the library shelves change perspective, and you see that they spell out the word “happiness”. Because the only way you’ll actually see happiness and achieve happiness is to change your perspective on what you’re looking for. You can’t be at the worldly level. And then in our Explanation video, which gets more directly into the teachings of the Catechism, we have a vision of a mountain, which we often associate with the 10 Commandments since Moses went up to receive the 10 Commandments and brought them back down. So sort of the fulfillment of the 10 Commandments might be to get to the top of that mountain where we encountered this gift from God. But there’s actually even this bigger mountain that is heaven; that is how God sees the world, and that is actually what the Beatitudes offer to us. We think that the Commandments might be clarity of natural law, but the Beatitudes are way beyond that. They are divine vision. They are divine happiness.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. I love that. Another good episode, if you’re listening to this and going, “Okay, how do I dive into this a little bit deeper?” It’s reminding me of the podcast episode with Dr. Scott Sollum where he was saying “The third Pillar, this is the life that we’re inviting people to.” And sometimes we focus so much on evangelization and calling people into a relationship with Jesus. But then people go “But what does that life actually look like? Well, this is the third Pillar. This is it. This is what the life looks like.” And the life with Christ sometimes can be either counterintuitive or just not exactly what we thought it would be. And I love that idea of a person kind of in a maze trying to choose the right directions to go through their life, but then this idea that God is above and can see the path of happiness. You know intellectually you’re supposed to go right, but to the right looks challenging or it looks difficult; it looks like a way of mourning or persecution. But God knows the final way to get to happiness.

And I love when we had those different conversations in the creative process and then also the way it turned out. The mountain image is so perfect because the way it looks on screen, it’s like, “Oh. A mountain’s really big, and this person’s this little tiny thing.” And then it just makes it even smaller. God’s divine happiness is an even bigger mountain than you could ever conceive of. And I love the way we did that. As we are diving into the Beatitudes, are there any other things that stood out or just like certain Beatitudes that kind of struck you? One of the things I had to do was try to practice the Beatitudes every day.

Emily Mentock: Right, for your Connection video.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. Man, it was harder than normal Connection videos because it actually required me to do something every day. So I would love to share some of those. But were there any to you that personally kind of stand out or you felt resonated with you while we were working on this unit?

Emily Mentock: Yeah. I would say overall the biggest shift was to go from understanding the Beatitudes as sort of this reward of a passive experience of things happening to you to realizing, “Okay, what we’re actually being called to is seeking this out. I need to pursue this. If I want to pursue divine happiness and eternal life in heaven, then I need to actively try to live these things out.” And so one that just sort of stood out to me was for example, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” And maybe in the past, understanding that would just mean like, “Okay, well you don’t start any fights.” Again, more of a 10 Commandments way of understanding things; of how to just avoid evil. But really, pursuit of good is “No. How do I actively try to bring peace?”

So it’s not just about like, “Oh, okay. Well if you start a fight, then I’m not going to escalate it.” It’s more of, “I actually need to try to bring peace into any conversation; any place that I am, whether it’s a work conversation, a relationship conversation, a family conversation to actually, actually live as Christ did.” Jesus didn’t just not escalate the problem. He actually would try to bring peace. And for me, again, this shifting into living out the Beatitudes; the call of the Beatitudes, is to cooperate with the grace that God gives us to live them out in pursuit of a life with Him. That just has totally changed how I’ve been approaching them since we started working on this unit.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. So that is what’s really powerful about this. I mean, it’s almost as if God and Jesus are real. Because it’s like, “Duh, this is powerful and transformative.” But for some reason, growing up Catholic, it’s like, you know these things, but you don’t take the time to really internalize them. And that was my experience as well. When I sat down to think, “How do I try to live out every Beatitude every day?” Which was the challenge for the video, I had the same realization, which was like, “Okay, in some ways I could react to situations. And then there are ways that I need to be proactive.” Or “how could I proactively live these out?” And that was the same thing, like, “How do I proactively live out blessed or those who are persecuted for righteousness sake?”

Emily Mentock: How do you be bolder with your faith? To be persecuted, you have to put yourself out there. And we’re not in any way suggesting that you have to go out and buy a ticket to another country where Christianity is persecuted. That’s not what it means. But just in your own life, how do you risk persecution a little bit more?

Edmund Mitchell: Yes. Yeah. So first the just awareness of everyday reflecting on the Beatitudes. Because the Commandments kind of come to mind. It’s like, “Oh, I shouldn’t kill someone.” I don’t really need to have known the Commandments for that or I don’t need to memorize them word for word. But the Beatitudes are a lot harder. And so just reflecting on them, it helped me see opportunities and go, “Oh, that’s right. Like, blessed are the peacemakers or blessed are the meek.” There was a situation with one of my kids where I got really angry and then that thought came to mind: “Blessed are the merciful.” And so I was like, “Okay, okay.” And I told my son. I was like, “I’m really mad, but I want you to experience forgiveness. This time, you do deserve a punishment, but I want you to experience forgiveness. You have a lot of anger too. And I’m going to forgive you for this.” And it came to mind because I had been reflecting on it.

Emily Mentock: Another one for me was for “Blessed are those who mourn.” And again, my past understanding would’ve been like, “Oh, okay. So if you’re sad in life, don’t worry. You’ll be happy in heaven with Jesus one day.” But instead upon this more intentional pursuit and integration of the Beatitudes in my life and trying to be more open to where God might be calling to that, I almost allowed myself to grieve more for things in the world that maybe would make God sad. You hear about wars that are going on or suffering here in the city that I live in. I saw in the news that a pedestrian was killed by a car. It’s kind of a random news story, but honestly, that happens everywhere all the time; that the news is always sad.

And instead of moving on, like “Okay, I don’t owe anything necessarily. It doesn’t impact my life in any way,”I’m going to sort of pause and allow myself to properly mourn the loss of human life. And I didn’t have to disrupt my whole day or send me into a spiral of grief or anything like that. But realizing that in that moment, and God was offering me the grace to properly react to the loss of that person’s life the way He would; the way God would see that. Whether what kind of relationship they had with Him or anything, the way I didn’t have a relationship with that person. How do I respond to that and mourn the way God would mourn the loss of that life?

It’s just a small thing. And I’m not saying that because I think I’m so holy or I’m so saintly or anything like that. I mean, that was my effort. That took effort to even do that small thing. But it just became so clear to me that the more that you try to actually allow the Beatitudes into your life and actually try to pursue them instead of this passive way of thinking that I had seen before, that is actually how saints live. I realized how much more attainable or how much more clear God’s vision of things; the path to holiness was when I thought about things in terms of the Beatitudes and not the 10 Commandments.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. A 1000%. I mean, there are people who don’t believe in God who are mourning, and there’s also a way to mourn that is hopeless and defeated. And then there’s a way to remember, “Blessed are those who mourn” and to say, “Look, God is presenting a way of happiness here in this moment. So I’m not going to mourn in a hopeless way.” And I’m not going to say, “Oh, I’m just going to be a happy Christian who’s never sad.” I’m going to say, “All right, God. I trust You that there’s a way for me to find true joy; actual divine happiness through my mourning.” And so I’m going to allow myself to mourn, but not in a hopeless way like “the world is ending,” but like, “I’m gonna go through this morning because I know that God has said blessed are those who mourn.” And I think that’s hopefully what people can take away from this is helping people shift their perspective to God’s vision. That there’s a blessing in the way that we approach these things. And again, it’s like what you said, that can only come from grace. You just acknowledge it in the moment and then say, “God, I just need grace to mourn in a way that is living out the Beatitudes.”

Emily Mentock: Yes. I’m so glad you mentioned trust, because I think one of the reasons why maybe either as students in catechesis classes or even as catechists ourselves, the Beatitudes can maybe get skipped over; they might not sink in the way that we would want them to or the way that we’re hoping they will from our conversation or from the videos that we created for this unit, is because they do seem totally paradoxical. They’re like, “How does this make any sense? They go against everything that our human nature would have us believe.” And that’s why they do require trust. They do require grace because they are not of our human nature. They are of God, and they are God’s way of seeing things. They’re Jesus’ way of living His life. And so, even when it doesn’t seem to make sense, and you think that, “Maybe if I react in anger that might feel better.” Or “Maybe if I just go on with my day without being distracted by this, then I’ll be happier because I had a more productive day.” Or whatever it is. What the Beatitudes require is a trust in God and a cooperation with the grace that He offers, that this is the only thing that will lead us to true and lasting happiness with Him forever.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. 1000%. So our job as evangelists and catechists, whether we’re in a professional setting or even we’re just parents or we’re friends or coworkers of people that we’re trying to share the faith. I mean, our job is to pass on all of the faith, and we have the full summary of the deposit of faith in the Catechism. And we have the Bible that contains all sacred scripture. And so, we need to make sure that we’re not just glossing over parts of it, especially, like the Catechism says, this is central to Jesus’ preaching. And so I hope that people listening to this would just be encouraged. Also, remember if you haven’t listened to the episode previously with Julianne Stanz, where she talks about people know if a doctrine just doesn’t mean anything to you, or even if you’re just kind of passive about it or—what’s the word I’m looking for?

Emily Mentock: Or even afraid of it? Yeah. If you don’t understand it fully or your heart’s not in it, or if you’re skeptical about it, the students will notice.

Edmund Mitchell: Right? Yeah. People know that. And so, you don’t have to wait until you’re an expert in scripture studies to have the teachings of the Beatitudes or the teachings of doctrine or something like this. The Beatitudes impact you. You can go spend time and reflect on this and it can change you. And it just takes that awareness of these doctrines and spending time with it. So maybe we could go to some practical tips for people who are thinking “How would I incorporate the Beatitudes more into evangelization and catechesis?” Or incorporating into their own lives or allowing it to change them if they’ve been like, “Yeah, this has just been something I’ve glossed over and haven’t spent enough time with.” And one of the things I’ll just share first is just printing them out and having them around the house. It just helped me become more aware throughout my day of them. And maybe in your classroom or in your parish or somewhere, just to have them up. We often see in classrooms and stuff, the 10 Commandments, but not as often the Beatitudes. But in this third Pillar, the Catechism, the Beatitudes are actually like the Commandments. Jesus elevates the Commandments through the Beatitudes. He elevates life in Christ through the Beatitudes. So just that practical thing of printing them out and seeing them and being reminded of them was huge.

Emily Mentock: Yeah. I think that’s so important keeping that constant reminder because I think really only by trying to bring it into your daily life, will it get all the way through to your heart. It’s the heart of Jesus’ preaching. The Catechism says this: It’s the heart of Jesus’ preaching because it’s not just the most important words He said, but it reveals the heart that He lived His whole life. And everybody who met Jesus met that heart that we are talking about; that the Beatitudes are a revelation of. Once you start to become more familiar with it and start to try a little bit to incorporate it into your life, to not be intimidated by the language of the Beatitudes. While the language and the study of the very intentional word choices is so important, I think one of the ways that they can be intimidating is like, “If you don’t know what meek means”…If you can’t think “what does persecuted for righteousness sake like look like in your own life?” Don’t skip over it because the language isn’t necessarily what you would use in your daily life. Instead, pray through that. Invite your classroom to have a conversation about “What do you think this looks like in your life?” So that you’re going beyond just the memorization of what they are. But first to sort of think, “Well, what does this look like in the times that I live in now?” And then build from there back up to what those words would’ve meant to Jesus or why the word choices are there in scripture.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. I mean, it’s almost like this whole unit is a great opportunity to just talk to people about following Jesus is about not avoiding the areas that are difficult or confusing or that we don’t have understanding of and to just lean into that; find ways to find more understanding or just sit with it and ask God, “Help me understand this.” Another really good practical tip that came up as we were working on this was that the lives of the saints are ways for us to show examples of life in Christ to people that we’re talking to or called to evangelize or catechize. So looking for the lives of the saints, when people are like, “What would it look like to be meek?” Obviously Jesus is the ultimate model.

Emily Mentock: Yeah, exactly.

Edmund Mitchell: But then finding people in different ages of the Church or more modern saints or people and showing “What does it look like to do these things? What does it do to hunger and thirst for righteousness? What does it mean or look like to be pure in heart?” All of these different things; to be poor in spirit, those types of things. So I think the lives of the saints is a great practical way to make this really tangible for people and not just be vague, abstract words.

Emily Mentock: Yeah, definitely. I think the last thing that I would want to say about it again is in our project, and as anyone moving through the Catechism, is sort of looking at the Beatitudes and the Commandments. And I think that this is coming up in the work that we’ll be doing, that the Commandments, because they’re an expression of natural law, they offer really great wisdom from the Church; from God on how to sort of navigate matters of this world. So we’re going to be getting into some units where the Catechism has very direct teaching on certain things that we might encounter in society; areas that people might struggle with; areas that have been the topic of much debate even in our time. And the Church, through the Commandments, gives us Her wisdom on how to navigate and avoid those areas.

But, just living out the Commandments is not what we’re called to live. We are actually called through the Beatitudes to go and pursue above that earthly level; above that worldly conversation to how God sees the world. One of my favorite lines of all the work that we’ve done so far; from the Catechism that we’ve studied was from this unit, which is that “The beatitude of heaven sets the standards for discernment and the use of earthly goods in keeping with the law of God.” And what I loved about that is that it sort of raises the bar. The Beatitudes set the standard, and the standard is not just the don’ts of the 10 Commandments; the clarity of the 10 Commandments or even an expansion and fulfillment of those. It really sets the standard for discernment at God’s level; at God’s way of seeing things. And that’s what we’re really called to. So I’ve been praying through that line. I would invite you all to do the same; that the Beatitudes really are the standard for discernment that we’re called to. And before we get any further in our teaching of a moral life in Christ here in Pillar Three, we have to really prayerfully reflect on that first.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. That’s a powerful line to end this episode on. There’s so many of us want to hear God’s voice, but we haven’t taken time to really become familiar with God’s voice. Would we even recognize it? And I’m thinking of the same thing with this. If the Beatitudes set the standard, but I’m not familiar with the Beatitudes, how am I to discern things? How am I to discern how to use earthly goods or make decisions in my daily life if I’m not familiar with the standard? So I love that. Anything else you want to share, or should we wrap up this wonderful episode? I’ve really enjoyed this.

Emily Mentock: Let’s wrap it up. Thank you so much for listening everyone. If you have any comments about what it’s been like for you to teach the Beatitudes, anything that you’ve found helpful or any questions that you have, definitely send them our way. We’ll be happy to answer them on future podcast episodes or via email. We are so grateful for all the feedback that we get from the catechists who are listening to this podcast or using the videos. We learn so much from you and we’re so grateful to be sharing in this mission with you. That mission is to unlock the beauty and truth of the Catechism and help people around the world encounter its pulsating heart: Jesus Christ. So visit realtrue.org to find more episodes of this podcast. I definitely agree with Edmund. If you haven’t listened to it, go back to the episode right before this with Julianne Stanz on The 10 Commandments. And you can also find all the videos that we’ve mentioned on this podcast there for your use for free.

Edmund Mitchell: Awesome. We’ll see you guys in the next episode. And we read all the comments, so please send in your comments. And we look forward to seeing you in the next episode of The Real and True Podcast.