June 6, 2005
The Beatitudes are certainly among the most powerful and radical words of the Gospel of Life spoken by our Saviour. We experience them as both challenging and comforting at the same time.
I remember, for example, a time when we were praying during a pro-life event upstate. It was particularly intense due to the large number of both pro-life and pro-abortion demonstrators. We were literally face-to-face across a dividing line on the sidewalk. Two of us friars were kneeling and praying the Rosary and Divine Mercy chaplet while the people across from us were yelling the usual slogans like “Not the Church, not the state, women will decide their fate” (an amazingly sad statement if one looks in the dictionary and realizes that one definition of fate is “death and destruction”, from the same root as “fatal”). When the other brother and myself “ran out of beads”, I pulled out my little pocket New Testament and opened it to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel. We began to chant the Beatitudes together in a simple fashion.
Perhaps the sight of the “Smith Brothers” kneeling and chanting on the sidewalk helped to catch the attention of some who were chanting some very blasphemous lines in our direction, but the Word of God, the Beatitudes, caught their attention even more. This was evidently true because when we stopped after the first 20 or so verses of Matthew 5, not only had it grown silent around us, but the people across from us asked us if we would please continue. They wanted to hear more!
Every time I hear the Beatitudes, I am reminded not to underestimate the power of the Word of God, because it truly does respond to the longings of every human heart.
Fr. Richard Roemer, CFR
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