The Beatitudes can sound like soft words for a hard world.
Blessed are the poor? The mourning? The meek?
They’re not the ones we usually call successful. They’re not trending. They don’t win.
And yet Jesus names them blessed.
This blessing isn’t sentiment. It’s not about reward, or being good enough, or holding it all together. It’s about becoming attuned to the truth of how God sees, how God acts, and how grace moves quietly through the world.
The Beatitudes invite us into a strange kind of wisdom. One that says we meet God most fully not when we are strong, but when we are open. Not when we win, but when we give ourselves away. It is a way of seeing that asks us to trust that hidden things matter. That mercy is strength. That longing is holy. That peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of courage.
In a school community, this wisdom has flesh. It shows up in the patient tone we choose even when we’re tired or in the middle of a heat wave with an inefficient air-conditioner. It’s in the effort to keep relationships whole, when it would be easier to shut down. It’s in the hope we hold on behalf of young people who can’t yet see it for themselves. The hope we know is that vital thread woven through the fabric of our lives.
To live the Beatitudes is to take the shape of Christ in the ordinary, in the faces we encounter. It is not easy. But it is beautiful. Because this way of blessing draws us into the deeper joy we were made for, the kind that doesn’t depend on applause or achievement, but on love lived freely, quietly, faithfully.
This is how the Kingdom comes. And it begins here.
Heavenly Father
As we draw on the words of Matthew and the teaching of Jesus may we find ourselves ever humbled to aspire. May our weakness lead us to openness to your strength. In our interactions may we live by the example and teaching of Your Son Jesus.
Amen.
The Female Theologian 