It is no accident that Jesus presented his beatitudes on a mountain. God delivered the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Those commandments were laws written on stone tablets. Jesus’ beatitudes are ideals that are to be written on human hearts. Jesus did not overturn the laws of Moses. But with the beatitudes, Jesus wanted to shift the focus from external laws to be obeyed to laws of love to be lived in the kingdom he came to reveal.

The beatitudes turn this world’s standards upside down. Happiness in being poor in spirit? “Nonsense!” the worldly tell us. The road to happiness is found in aggressiveness, ambition and success in competition.

Happiness, Jesus tells us, is given to us by God. We don’t win it, achieve it, merit it or buy it. Everyone can have it. When it comes to happiness, everyone can be a winner. Happiness and fulfillment, Jesus teaches, will come to people with open hands, humble hearts and receptive spirits. The kingdom is God’s gift; it’s not ours to fashion as we wish.

Blessedness for the sorrowing? The poor? The meek? The persecuted? You won’t find them on TV talk shows.

Who are the meek? They are those who have harnessed their talents and abilities to serve God’s interests, not their own interests. They find happiness in serving others.

The hungry and thirsty? They continually seek a better, deeper, and richer relationship with God. They hunger for a better world in which we care for each other. The merciful? They are centered on others. They are willing to forgive and to seek reconciliation.

Now in contrast, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a famous German philosopher from the nineteenth century who was instrumental in shaping the Nazi philosophy that the fittest should rise to the top, and those at the bottom should be dismissed from living. He also believed that God was dead.

Nietzsche’s view is still the rallying cry of many atheists who proclaim that God does not exist, or is irrelevant to our world today. This modern perspective dismisses Christian practice and belief. But Saint Paul reminds us that when we put our faith in Christ, we cannot be deterred. As we heard in today’s reading:
God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something.

The Christian belief is that Christ is our redemption and our justification, and that living a life modeled on the beatitudes leads to happiness and fulfillment. That belief is now two thousand years old, and is still strongly held by more than two billion people. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is very much dead, and God is quite alive in this world because of those who believe in Jesus Christ and strive to live the message of the beatitudes.

(Fr. Michał Pająk, OMI, Feb. 1, 2026)