Politics is in the news these days and whether you live in a red or blue state, vote right or left and somewhere in the middle, it is hard to avoid the noise coming out of the nation’s capital.
When I was in the Holy Land, the Dominican who guided us said something that has been on my mind these last few days. As we visited the Mount of Beatitudes, he asked the group if we could recite any words to the US Constitution. A few knew how it started, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense….” Then the voices trailed off.
Though no one could say much more, we knew the gist of it and could certainly explain what the Constitution did, its place in history, and why it was still important.
But that Father Paul threw us a curve. How many could recite the Beatitudes? We had just read Matthew 5:3-12 and yet few of us could remember more than a few of the eight in the list.
“We remember what guides a country, but not what guides our faith,” Father Paul challenged. He likened the Beatitudes to our own constitution. That got me thinking. By definition, a constitution is “a body of fundamental principles or established precedents,” so doesn’t it stand to reason that the Beatitudes are just that – fundamental principles of our Catholic faith?
Take some time this week and read Matthew, chapter five. See how many you can commit to memory (I’m up to six). Think about what each teaches. Imagine what it must have been like to be challenged by those words two thousand years ago.
As the good bishop, Fulton Sheen, once said, “If you do not live what you believe, you will end up believing what you live.” Maybe living what we believe begins with knowing what we believe.
Now there’s a lesson our politicians could certainly use.
~pjd
(photo taken looking from the Church of the Beatitudes down the mountain)