How the Beatitudes Spread Love
“So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).
We often associate love with joy: family gatherings, spending time with friends, activities that bring us together and make us feel alive. Particularly during Christmastime, we frequently have a plentitude of occasions that connect us with the people we care about, and loving others can feel like a natural outpouring of the season. While many of these things are inherently good and beautiful, what happens when loving is hard, when life or our relationships with others don’t look like the quintessential Hallmark movie?
When Love is Hard
If we read through the Beatitudes, we find many words that don’t necessarily give us that warm, joyous holiday feeling: “poor,” “mourn,” “meek,” “hunger and thirst,” and “persecuted” to name a few. The Beatitudes are expressions of various states of being that can often be uncomfortable and undesirable for us. Many of the virtues celebrated in the Beatitudes, such as humility, mercy, and reliance on God can also be viewed by our current-day society as weaknesses.
Modern love is frequently self-directed, and the idea of sacrificing for the good of another is all too often rejected. We look for love to bring us joy, to be comforting, but the reality is that true love is sacrificial and requires a certain level of discomfort that is at odds with the brightly glittering world around us.
On Sacrificial Love
One of the clearest depictions of the type of sacrificial love expressed through the Beatitudes can be found in this passage from Corinthians: “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7).
This is the type of sacrificial love that is expressed in the Beatitudes, and this is the type of love found in the manger at Bethlehem, where we discover the greatest example of love ever given: a child who would lay down His life, so that we might have eternal life. It is in emulating the purest love of our Savior that we learn to live the virtue of love and begin to see it bear fruit.
Spreading Love this Christmas Season
Love is palpable this time of year, but it is often intertwined in the occasions of visiting, decorating, gift giving, baking, and other activities that we often look forward to because they are comforting, nostalgic, and bring us cheer. This Christmas, let us accept the challenge of stepping out of this place of contentment to practice sacrificial love. Each of us can choose one Beatitude to practice in a difficult situation that we might encounter during this season. This can look different to every individual, but might include:
Working to create peace in our homes and families amongst those who are at odds.
Speaking with conviction about our faith even when others may not agree with us or might ridicule us.
Forgiving a family member who has hurt us, without expecting anything from them in return.
The Beatitudes don’t promise us a reward in this life, but only in the next. Let us be bold in loving others in a sacrificial way, so that the joy we experience moves beyond the superficial and toward the supernatural, in anticipation of that one day when we may experience the true joy of Heaven.
Laura Henry works in marketing as a project manager and also serves as the project manager for Catholic Women in Business. After spending a decade as a private voice and piano instructor, she continues to participate in music whenever possible.