Video Transcript

Edmund: There’s this little nugget of Jesus’ preaching in the Gospels called the Beatitudes. And the Church says that the Beatitudes are central to Jesus’ preaching. So I thought: “I’ll put it to the test. How will my life change if I tried to live the Beatitudes every single day for a week?”

So that’s what I set out to do. But before I tell you what happened, which was surprising, I have to make a little confession. 

So here’s my confession: To be honest, most of my life the Beatitudes I neglected. I didn’t think they were that important. Just to jog your memory, here’s a list of all 8 Beatitudes: (*List of Beatitudes on screen*)

Even though I went into ministry full-time; I worked in parish ministry for over 10 years. I make videos online about the faith and Jesus. Like if ANYONE should have an understanding of how the Beatitudes apply to the everyday of someone who is trying to follow Jesus… I feel like I should have known this. But I haven’t. For years. Like even the past couple years. So, the challenge was: for seven days, I’m going to do everything in my power to try to apply the Beatitudes to my everyday life. 

First part of this challenge was to figure out how to make them practical because the Beatitudes, at first glance, seem a little—how do you say this—vague? So I turned to the Catechism for help. 

In paragraph 1723 it says this: “The beatitude we are promised confronts us with decisive moral choices. It invites us to purify our hearts of bad instincts and to seek the love of God above all else..” Okay. So I sent out thinking, “Decisive, moral choices. Decisive moral choices.” So there’s a way that these Beatitudes can inform how I’m making decisions everyday. So I thought “Okay. If I’m going to do this for seven days..” I’m like looking around my house at all the things I do on a daily basis and just wondering like “How would I make this happen?”

So I started praying. And help came from two very different places. One was Matthew McConaughey. And one was St. Thomas Aquinas. And there’s this clip that came up of Matthew McConaughey talking about how he dosen’t focus so much on memorizing lines:

“You don’t try to remember all the lines. First, you read it and you try to understand it. You read it again. I read it after a run when my endorphins are flying. I”ll read it when I’m feeling, you know, right after church when I’m feeling in a very forgetting mood. I’ll read it when I’m mad, sad, glad, tired, happy, excited… Many different places where I am personally, I’ll read a script and I’ll have…That means I’ll have a different look at the same scenes because I’m in a different place.”

So I thought “Okay. I need to print out the Beatitudes, put them everywhere, and just be interacting with them on a more regular basis; just be kind of internalizing them and reacting to them in all the different parts of my day; to be encountering this central part of Jesus’ preaching on a daily basis multiple times throughout the day. And, also, be more aware of how I’m responding to the Beatitudes in the various parts of my day. 

So the second place that helped was St. Thomas Aquinas. And he categorizes all the things that were tempted to put in the place of God into these four categories. And the Catechism says that the Beatitudes help purify our hearts, so I was thinking “Okay. Maybe that will help me think of the Beatitudes and think of ways that they are the opposite of placing these things above God. 

He listed these four things: wealth, pleasure, power and honor. So, armed with these things in mind, I printed out my Beatitudes lists and placed them all over the house and I started brainstorming. Right here, I just want to say: Don’t focus too much on what I came up with or ways that I felt like God was calling me to apply these to my life. That would be missing the point. I mean, the point here is for YOU to internalize and engage with the Beatitudes and to discern where God is calling YOU to live out these Beatitudes in your everyday life. 

So there’s one more thing I realized as I was trying to live this out. It’s important to remember that the Catechism says in paragraph 1717: “The Beatitudes depict the countenance of Jesus Christ and portray his charity.” So the Beatitudes really show us a lot about the personality of Jesus; what He’s like. But then later in paragraph 1727 it says: “The beatitude of eternal life is a gratuitous gift of God. It is supernatural, as is the grace that leads us there.” That means when I’m trying to live out the Beatitudes, I’m trying to live as Jesus lives. And that can’t be done on my own. It really requires Jesus to give me grace to live it out. 

Okay, you ready? I’m going to share some of these with you. This is a little embarrassing, but just bear with me. So “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Every day I tried to give something away. Anything. I would try to pick one thing that I could donate or gift to someone to try to live this out. 

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” And “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” I researched and picked a few communities and social justice issues that really resonated with me. And I tried to read about them every day and pray for these communities, look for ways that I could be involved and also just put myself in their shoes. 

So “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Every day I tried to think of friends I knew; people I knew that had lost a loved one, and I tried to say a prayer for them; pray for them to be comforted. 

This next one, I was kind of shocked at how this changed me. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” I found a sermon by Pope St. John Paul II where he talked about doing good deeds out of love of God and not just to gain people’s approval. And that’s something that’s difficult for me. So, I tried every day to look for some small thing I could do for someone else that I could do without them knowing. 

Okay, so after seven days, what happened? I have some notes here from my journal; my prayer journal. The goal of this challenge was to try to make the Beatitudes more practical in my everyday life; to try and think about them more. I really wondered what it would look like to try to make them central to my everyday life. I’m not going to lie: usually making these videos is not as challenging as this was. This was hard.

I mean, a lot of my life, to me, just seems kind of boring and routine and not very eventful, And I think for me, that really was the big takeaway: that this was hard. By the last day, I really was appreciating that following Jesus is a lifelong process. I also realized very clearly how much I need to rely on grace. There would be these little mundane moments throughout my day where the Beatitudes would just pop up into my head. And I would use those moments to just offer up a quick prayer. Those became more memorable moments than the ways I tried to intentionally plan to live these out. I just tried to lean into that and have a conversation with Jesus about why it was that I found certain Beatitudes more difficult than others to live out. 

So, I would encourage you to try this. I highly recommend it. Take some time in prayer with a piece of paper, the list of the Beatitudes, and maybe even the section of the Catechism on the Beatitudes. Reflect on them; try to come up with your own ideas of ways you can live this out, but also be open to the ways that God is going to inspire you to live them out in your daily life. 

But the important thing is that God does promise that following His way of happiness will be satisfying for us. So take some time to really explore this and to challenge yourself to see what would happen if you really believed that Jesus elevates the Commandments and reveals God’s way of happiness through the Beatitudes.