What are the Beatitudes?

What is a system of faith, and when is it outdated?

The soundtrack to my past few months has been Czieslaw Niemen's "Dziwny Jest Ten Swiat" , which translates to "Strange is our World."

I can't help but think of God himself bobbing his head to the soulful organ and simply true lyrics, as Niemen crooned:

"How Strange is our world.
Where still, somehow
there is room for so much wrong...
...it is a shame to admit."

Yesterday's mass reading was the famous Beatitudes.

Almost two millenia after people first heard these revolutionary thoughts, we still haven't gotten them through our collective thick skulls.

The homilist at my Church stated it brilliantly yesterday:

What if above the doors of our courts, it read:
"Blessed are the merciful?"

What if above the doors of our military bases, it read:
"Blessed are the peacemakers?"

What if above the doors of Senate and Congress, it read:
"Blessed are those who thirst for Righteousness?"

I'm sure that you can think of a few yourself. My point is this: whether we are talking about the people who embrace him -- or those who reject him -- it seems that few of us have really listened to what Christ really had to say.

It is difficult to say that "Christianity is outdated," when we've rarely gotten it right in the first place. Indeed, as a system for life, it is one that we are called to revisit now more than ever.

The Beatitudes seem to ring true in our hearts, because they address the most fundamental aspects of our human journey. They register as an echo of perfect eternity in our hearts -- haunting us because of our origins, inspiring us because of our destiny.

I have taken up Richard Dawkins on his invitation to "imagine a world without religion." I know of a world where enough people have at least tried to live up to the beatitudes as to rescue us from much misery. I shudder to think where we would be today, had they never been set as a human standard so long ago.

So this year, instead of giving something up for Lent, I will instead dedicate myself to re-learning the words of Christ. When the season is over, I will still be a deeply flawed human being... but perhaps I will be a little kinder, more patient, possessed of greater vision, and a little less of a hypocrite.

Those are goals that we can all strive towards, my friends, regardless of our differing religious beliefs. As another wise man recently reminded me: "God does not desire perfection, only progress."

I think that the late Czeslaw Niemen was echoing Christ's words in his famous song, as if to say: "after all the terrible things we have seen in recent history, how can there still be room for willing strife in our hearts?" He concludes his song by saying:

"It is time -- high time -- that we kill the hate in our hearts"

Indeed, how can there still be room for such things?

And just for fun, here is a live clip of the afformentioned song, all the way back from Opole Fest 1979:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1bdMhrvh20&feature=related