The Church of the Beatitudes

There is no doubt that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is the most famous sermon ever preached. It is perhaps also the most misunderstood. It is not a summary of the whole Christian faith. Rather it is a description of how the Christian demonstrates and lives his/her faith.

This is not a sermon on justification – of how a God saves a person. Rather it is entirely a sermon on sanctification – of how a person lives after God has saved him/her.

In order to understand this sermon, we must keep in mind the audience to whom it was preached and the purpose Jesus had in mind. The audience was, primarily, Jesus’ disciples, although the large crowds who had been following Jesus were evidently in the background listening in. The purpose of the sermon was to give the believers a better understanding of the God-pleasing life.

There are certain passages of Scripture which Christians truly treasure. One favorite section is the twenty-third Psalm. Other verses of Scripture known and loved by many Christians are the Beatitudes – Jesus' introduction to his Sermon on the Mount, a sermon recorded in chapters 5-7 of Matthew.

The term beatitude comes from the predominant word in this section: “Blessed.” The word is intoned again and again. One author says, "It sounds like the bells of heaven, ringing down into this unblessed world from the cathedral spires of the kingdom inviting all people to enter."

Jesus is speaking to his disciples. He is talking to His believers, to you and me. And He is calling us blessed. Jesus is not telling us how to become blessed. He is rather describing the blessedness that already belongs to all believers in Christ. We are spiritually blessed as members of His kingdom.


I have included pictures of the Church of the Beatitudes. It is an octagonal church – 8 sided for the 8 beatitudes. The church is on top of a hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee where Jesus conducted most of His ministry.


The windows are at eye-level so people in the chapel can worship and be inspired as they see what Jesus saw. There are 8 windows inscribed with each of the beatitudes in Latin.


When you look at the pictures of the landscape, you can compare them to the rock that the Matthew movie portrays for the mount where Jesus preached. This mount has a natural theatre where Jesus would have been on the bottom preaching and teaching while the people sat on the hillside. This would have been like an open auditorium with natural acoustics.


Church of the Beatitudes From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
History

Located on a small hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee, and built on the traditional site of Jesus' delivery of the Sermon on the Mount,[1] pilgrims are known to have commemorated this site since at least the 4th century. In her itinerary of the Holy Land, after describing the Church of the Loaves and Fishes, the pilgrim Egeria (c.381) writes, "Near there on a mountain is the cave to which the Savior climbed and spoke the Beatitudes." The current church sits near the ruins of a small Byzantine era church dating to the late 4th century[2], which contains a rock-cut cistern beneath it and the remains of a small monastery to its southeast. Part of the original mosaic floor has also been recovered and is now on display in Capernaum. Both Popes Paul VI and John Paul II celebrated Mass at the church during their pastoral visits to the Holy Land.[2]


Design and Construction
The modern church was built between 1936 and 1938 near the site of the fourth century Byzantine ruins. The floor plan is octagonal, the eight sides representing the eight Beatitudes.[2] The church is Byzantine in style with a marble veneer casing the lower walls and gold mosaic in the dome. In front of the church are mosaic symbols on the pavement representing Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, Charity, Faith, and Temperance.
Jerome Murphy-O'Connor describes the selection of the site thus; "It was perhaps inevitable that this well-watered area with its shade trees on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where Byzantine pilgrims ate their picnics, should have been identified as the location of two episodes involving the consumption of food, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes and the conferral on Peter of the responsibility of leadership after a fish breakfast. Then it became convenient to localize the Sermon of the Mount on the small hill nearby." (The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide from Earliest Times to 1700, p.277) Regardless of whether this is the very spot, the Church of the Beatitudes stands in the general area and in a very similar setting to where Jesus would have stood as he delivered his famous sermon. As Murphy-O'Connor puts it, "from here one can see virtually all the places in which Jesus lived and worked" (p.280).

Religious Affiliation
The church is maintained and overseen by the Franciscan Order.

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