“The Be Happy Attitudes,” they’ve been called. The opening sayings of the Sermon on the Mount, today’s Gospel, are usually referred to as the Beatitudes. It’s from the repeating word Blessed, which in Latin is Beati. Beati pauperes spiritu. “Blessed are the spiritual paupers.” I doubt that’s what people mean when they say they’re spiritual but not religious.

Robert Schuller popularized the idea that blessed is really an attitude. In his book The Be Happy Attitudes, Schuller writes, “Blessed literally means ‘happy.’ So … you can be happy if you will discover the eight positive attitudes given to us by Jesus in the Beatitudes.”

I want you to be happy. But blessedness is something far deeper than happiness. Blessedness transcends happiness. Blessedness helps us survive all the unhappy things. Blessedness is not an attitude. It’s a condition, a state, a status…