These verses, the opening phrases of the Sermon on the Mount, hold some of the Bible’s most beautiful and best-loved poetry. Part of its beauty, though, lies in the fact that the meaning is not quite clear. What does it mean to be “poor in spirit”? What does it mean to “inherit the earth” or to be called “the children of God.” The fact that there are many possibilities causes us to linger over the phrases, pondering them.

Understood in the internal sense, these blessings show the spiritual states of the various people who could be receptive of the Lord and the new church he was launching. On a deeper level it shows that states within ourselves that can lead each of us to the Lord and to a deeper understanding of His truth today.

The “poor in spirit” are those who know little about spiritual things, but want to learn. Those that “mourn” are those who want to be good, but see no desire for good in their church. The “meek” are those who love to care for and serve others. To “hunger and thirst after righteousness” shows a desire to rise up, to learn about what’s good and to come to desire it.

The “merciful” are those who love their fellow people. The “pure in heart” are those who love only what is good. “Peacemakers” are those who are in harmony with the Lord, gaining knowledge from Him and wanting what He wants. And to be “persecuted for righteousness’ sake” means acting out of love and care for others, even though you are condemned by others for it.

There’s something of a progression there, from those who simply want to learn to those who actively want to be good people to those who actually are good and acting out of love for others. None of it, though, describes those who are learned in the Jewish traditions, or even necessarily observant in terms of ritual; they are, rather, those who sense that it is possible to be a good person and are willing to make the effort.

And they are promised their rewards! The “kingdom of heaven” is the understanding the angels have of the Lord; “comfort” represents ideas that lead to the good of life; “inheriting the earth” is a state of loving others and being loved by them in return. The overall message is simple: If we truly wish to be good people, and are willing to let the Lord teach us how to be good people, we will end up filled with love and wisdom from Him. And that’s what we need to focus on: The desire to be good, and openness to ideas from the Lord. It’s not about ritual and intellectual “correctness”; it’s about ideas that lead us to be good.

But what of being reviled and persecuted? This depicts temptation, when the hells attack our newborn good desires and true understanding. They cause us to doubt our ability to be truly good and question the ideas that are leading us. And they can do it in many ways, reminding us of the fun we’ll be missing or reminding us of all the bad things we’ve ever done to render us hopeless. They will even attack the Bible and the ideas that come to us through it from the Lord; that’s represented by the idea that people also attacked the prophets.

These states, however, are blessed in their own way; only by battling these evils, which are rooted inside us, can we finally fully embrace the good life we have been striving for. That’s why it is pictured last, and that's why it leads to the “great reward” in heaven.

481. In order that it may be known again how extraordinary the grossness of this age is, that its wise counselors do not see anything sinful in adultery - as discovered by angels in the incident reported just above (no. 478) - I will add the following account: ¹

I encountered certain spirits who, from practice in the life of the body, infested me with a peculiar skill, and this by a delicate and kind of undulating influx, such as is characteristic usually of upright spirits. But I perceived that they had in them a cunning and guile and the like, in order to captivate and deceive.

At length I spoke with one of them, who I was told had been the commander of an army when he lived in the world. ² And because I perceived that there was something lascivious in the ideas of his thought, I spoke with him in spiritual speech using representations, which expresses the meanings of things fully and more in an instant.

He said that in the life of his body in the previous world he had regarded adulteries as nothing. But I was able to say to him that adulteries are unspeakable, even though they appear to people like him, from the delight that seizes them and from their consequent persuasion, that they are delightful, indeed, permissible. Moreover he could know this from the fact that marriages are the seedbed of the human race, and so also the seedbed of the kingdom of heaven, and therefore are not to be violated, but held sacred. He could know this also, I said - which he ought to know, being in the spiritual world and in a state of perception - from the fact that conjugial love descends from the Lord through heaven, and that from that love, as from a parent, stems mutual love, which is what heaven is founded on. So, too, he could know this from the fact that when adulterers simply come anywhere near heavenly societies, they perceive their own stench and therefore cast themselves down in the direction of hell. At least he might have known, I said, that to violate marriages is contrary to Divine laws, contrary to the civil laws of all countries, and contrary to the light of reason, and thus contrary to commonly accepted morality, because it violates both Divine and human order. And so on.

[2] But he replied that he had thought nothing like that in his former life. He wished to reason out whether it were so, but I told him that truth is not subject to lines of reasoning; for reasonings incline to delights of the flesh which oppose delights of the spirit, because the flesh does not know what the latter delights are like. Rather he ought first to consider the things I had said, because they were true. Or he should think in accordance with that familiar principle, which is very well known in the world, that no one ought to do to another what he would not want another to do to him. Consider, for example, if someone were to have seduced his wife in this way, a wife he loved (as is the case in the beginning of every marriage). If, while in a state of fury over it, he were to have spoken in accordance with that state, would he, too, not have then denounced adulteries? And being a man of intelligence, would he not more than others have then confirmed himself against them, even so as to condemn them to hell? Indeed, because he was the commander of an army and associated in it with men of action, in order not to be the subject of reproach, would he not have either killed the adulterer or cast the harlot out of his house?

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