Vatican City, Jan 30, 2011 / 11:10 am
The Beatitudes offer a “new program of life” and demand a discipleship through which people today can open themselves up to what is truly good, Pope Benedict XVI explained during his traditional noon audience on Sunday.
On a pleasant and mild winter morning in Rome, thousands of young people were in St. Peter's Square with Italy's Catholic Action association to mark the end of their annual initiative for peace in the month of January.
Their singing and dancing entertained the crowd until the Pope arrived in his studio window for the Angelus prayer.
His pre-Angelus message centered on what he called the “Gospel of the Beatitudes,” Jesus' first major address to the people in the hills around the Sea of Galilee.
From the mountain, Jesus “proclaims ‘blessed’ the poor in spirit, the afflicted, the merciful, all those who hunger for justice, the pure of heart, the persecuted,” recalled the Pope.
This was not a “new ideology,” but “a teaching that comes from on high and touches the human condition,” which Jesus himself assumed to save it, said Benedict XVI.