Blisses
Les Béatitudes (of Latin beatitudo, happiness) is the name given to a well-known part of the Sermon on the Mountain, brought back in the Évangiles of Matthieu and Luc; according to some, like Henri Nouwen, it in is even the essential part. In this section, Jesus describes the virtues of the citizens of the Kingdom of heaven, and shows how each one of them is/will be blessed. The Blisses hardly describe isolated individuals, but rather the characteristics of those which one regards as blessed by God. Each blessed person is not generally regarded as such according to the criteria of the world but, to see it with a celestial prospect, she is truly blessed. The word traditionally translated into French by “blessed” or “happy” is in the Greek original “μακαριος” whose fully literal translation would be: “which has an interior joy unable to be affected by the circumstances which surround it. ” Each Bliss presents a situation in which the described person would not be regarded by the world as “not blessed”, and yet Jesus declares that she is really blessed and of a blessing which will last longer than any blessing than the world is able to offer to him.
These verses are quoted early in the Divine Liturgy of saint Jean Chrysostome, liturgy which continues to be most often employed in the orthodoxe Église. Similar expressions are also recorded in some Dead Sea Scroll and one finds some in Jewish sources of before the Christian era.
Matthieu 5:3 - 12
5.3 Happy those which have the spirit of poverty, because the kingdom of heaven is with them!
5.4 Happy afflicted, because they will be comforted!
5.5 Happy débonnaires, because they will inherit the ground!
5.6 Happy those which are hungry and thirst for justice, because they will be satisfied!
5.7 Happy the miséricordieux ones, because they will obtain mercy!
5.8 Happy those which have the pure heart, because they will see God!
5.9 Happy those which get peace, because they will be called sons of God!
5.10 Happy those which are persecuted for justice, because the kingdom of heaven is with them!
5.11 Happy will be you, when one outragera you, that you will be persecuted and that one will wrongfully tell you any kind of evil, because of me.
5.12 You delight and are in joy, because your reward will be large in the skies; because thus one persecuted the prophets who were before you.
(Translation Louis Segond. In the contemporary translations, the expression “the poor in spirit” has tendency has to be replaced by another formulation such as “the poor of heart” (TOB) or “those which have a heart of poor” (Osty)). ----
Zh-min-nan: Si̍t-chāi E hok-khì
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