THE BEATITUDES

Mankind is created in the image and likeness of God for the purpose of sharing in the Divine Life and participating in the blessedness of the infinite glory and goodness of the Holy Trinity.This Beatific Vision is not seeing God in His essence, but rather seeing God by possessing Him within oneself. Communion with God is attained through the cooperation of the divine and human will, whereby the follower of Jesus Christ puts on Christ through the sacraments of the Church and imitates the life of Christ through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father. Amen. Jesus describes in the opening words of His Sermon on the Mount all that produces beatitude. The very intent of the Beatitudes is to issue the Father's divine call for man to enter in the blessedness of the Divine Life.Therefore, the Beatitudes illuminate the pathway to theosis ('deification' or 'divinization'), which is a journey of eternal progress in the virtuous life by which a perpetual transformation is made into the likeness of God from glory to glory. The Scriptures and the patristic writings of the Church Fathers provide the theological foundation of this book, the objective of which is to provide a guide for the soul to consciously advance in the spiritual life toward the divine goal of theosis in a step-by-step, concrete way.