Today Jesus is teaching His disciples. In His teaching, He gifts them with the Beatitudes. We all are familiar with the Beatitudes. However, do we take the time to sit with these eight beautiful teachings and ask ourselves: “How do I strive to be a living example of this beatitude?”

Some people have seen in these Beatitudes a portrait of Jesus himself, and certainly The Beatitudes should be the portrait of every Christian,  a  charter that people everywhere (and not just Christians) are called to follow. They go far beyond what is demanded of us in the Ten Commandments. They  are not so difficult to follow and, in so far as several of them are expressed in the negative (‘Thou shalt not…’), they can be observed by doing nothing! There is no way, however, that people can ever say they observe any Beatitude to the fullest. The Beatitudes  always call us to a further and higher level.

Jesus does not want us simply to act.  He wants us to act mindfully, deliberately, and lovingly! Will we choose to do this today? We may not only give a great gift to another, we may receive a great gift as we share the little that we have!