The Pursuit of Happiness - God's Way - Living the Beatitudes

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When we think of happiness, we have to admit that our idea is at times worldly and self-centered. Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount showed us that true happiness will elude us, however, if we follow that kind of thinking. And, in the form of a series of promises and challenges which we have come to know as the Beatitudes, He told us how to find perfect happiness both here and hereafter. In a world that is capable of the best and the worst, we all have reason to be concerned about the very possibility of ever finding happiness in our lifetimes. The good news of the Gospel message is that we can. Even more, it teaches a way based not on rules and obligations so much as one founded on love, a way that depends upon and leads to the blessings of God Himself. These pages have been written in the conviction that every seeker should make the Sermon on the Mount the primary source of what will and will not make them happy. In His approach to the question, Jesus insists from the outset that we face up to the inevitable trials of poverty, tears, hunger and thirst, and shows us how we can find God as the source and object of our joy in the midst of them. Servais Pinckaers, professor of moral theology at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland examines Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, commending it as the primary source of what will and will not make human beings happy Preface vii The Sermon on the Mount 1 The Beatitudes 23 Blessed are the Poor in Spirit 39 Meekness and the Menagerie Within 55 For Those Who Mourn 73 Hunger and Thirst 91 The Quality of Mercy 111 I Will Give You a New Heart 127 In Search of the Sources of Peace 145 A Blessing for the Persecuted 165 The Commentaries of St. Augustine and St. Thomas on the Beatitudes 189 Bibliography 203