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The
Beatitudes
These solemn blessings mark the opening of the
Sermon on the Mount, which is the very first of Our
Lord's sermons in the Gospel of St. Matthew (v,
3-10). Four of them occur again in a slightly
different form in the Gospel of St. Luke (vi, 22),
at the beginning of a sermon, and Matthew, 5-7.
The
form in which Our Lord proposed His blessings make
them, perhaps, the only example of His sayings that
may be styled poetical - the parallelism of thought
and expression, which is the most striking feature
of Biblical poetry, being unmistakably clear. |