Pope Leo XIV urges the faithful to live the Beatitudes, calling them a divine path to joy, renewal, and light amid the world’s shadows.
Newsroom (02/02/2026 Gaudium Press ) During his Sunday Angelus at the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV offered a profound reflection on the Beatitudes, describing them as “lights that the Lord kindles in the darkness of history.” He urged Christians to see the Beatitudes not merely as moral ideals but as a living source of happiness and divine renewal amid the trials of the modern world.
The Pope drew his meditation from the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus proclaims the blessings of the poor, the meek, and the merciful. “God gives hope to those whom the world discards as desperate,” Pope Leo said, reminding the faithful that the divine message is one of mercy and transformation for all humanity.
A Law Written on the Heart
Speaking to thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo reflected on Christ’s sermon on the mount, where “a new law is written in the heart, no longer on stone.” This law, he explained, “renews our lives and makes them good, even when the world seems to have failed us and is full of misery.”
Only God, he continued, “can truly call the poor and afflicted blessed,” because He alone satisfies “those who seek peace and justice.” The Pope emphasized that this spiritual law reveals the inner grace of faith — a conviction that turns suffering into holiness and despair into hope.
Joy in the Face of Paradox
Pope Leo acknowledged that the Beatitudes might appear paradoxical in a world that equates success with power and wealth. “Those who are accustomed to thinking that happiness belongs to the rich may believe that Jesus is deluded,” he said. “However, the delusion lies precisely in the lack of faith in Christ.”
He pointed to Christ’s own humility as the ultimate witness: “the poor man who shares his life with everyone, the meek man who perseveres in suffering, the peacemaker persecuted to death on the cross.” Through this example, the Pope said, Jesus redefines history, no longer as a record of conquest, but as “the ongoing work of God, who saves the oppressed.”
A Divine Measure of Contentment
For Pope Leo XIV, the Beatitudes are not abstract ideals but a practical “measure of happiness.” They challenge believers to consider whether happiness is something to be achieved through possessions or something to be shared through love and faith.
“They lead us to ask ourselves whether we see it as an achievement to be bought or a gift to be shared; whether we place it in objects that wear out or in relationships that accompany us,” the Pope reflected. In this view, true happiness is not deferred to the afterlife but is already present as “a constant grace that always sustains us, especially in the hour of affliction.”
The Triumph of the Humble
In closing his Angelus address, Pope Leo invoked the Virgin Mary, “the servant of the Lord, whom all generations call blessed,” as the model of a life shaped by the Beatitudes. Through her intercession, he prayed, the faithful might learn to embody humility, mercy, and peace — virtues that “lift up the humble and disperse the proud in their inmost thoughts.”
Pope Leo’s words echoed through the square as a call to rediscover the essence of Christian joy. In the Beatitudes, he said, lies the blueprint for a radiant life, where human weakness is transfigured by divine grace and happiness becomes not a possession, but a way of being.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Vatican News
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