Friar behind 'Rosary in a Year' explores Jesus Christ's 'blueprint' in the beatitudes

After climbing the podcast charts with “Rosary in a Year,” Father Mark-Mary Ames of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal recently released “Eight Promises of God: Discovering Hope Through the Beatitudes,” a book that he hopes will encourage people to see “the beauty and the gift that the Lord offers us in the beatitudes.”

Father Ames talked to OSV News about why he felt it was important for the faithful to explore the meaning behind the beatitudes.

“Jesus is the man of the beatitudes, and our call is to have Jesus’ own life lived in us,” he said. “This is the blueprint, the game plan, the portrait of what it’s supposed to look like.”

“The beatitudes are invitations to hope,” he emphasized, “which is why I think it’s so important for our times.”

The beatitudes offer us “a way in which we can be seen,” he added, because “God wants to speak his comfort” to “those who are experiencing the mourning of loss; those who are experiencing the mourning of maybe not being in their vocation; those who are experiencing the mourning of infertility.”

Each of the beatitudes offers “a way for a specific word of good news to be spoken into our lives.” The book illustrates each beatitude in the life of Jesus Christ and others with stories from Scripture and from Father Ames’ own life and ministry with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.

As a Franciscan, Father Ames said the beatitude “Blessed are the poor in spirit for the kingdom of heaven is theirs” especially speaks to him and serves as a reminder of our ultimate dependence on God.

“For me there’s an invitation to experience a blessedness and a poverty because of the promise of God and that he’s already with me,” he said. “He’s already at work and it’s OK for me to depend on him and depend on his intervention in my life.”

“There’s a real place of vulnerability in the Christian life that’s communicated in the beatitudes,” he said, “because we do actually have to wait on God and he has to come, but we’re blessed because we know he will come.”

Father Ames pointed out two reactions people often have to the beatitudes that miss the mark.

One is almost a prosperity gospel or “this idea that if I’m doing the right thing, I’m saying the prayers, going to Mass, everything’s going to work out the way I want it to,” even though “that’s just not what it looks like in the life of Jesus.”

Another reaction, he said, would be “to focus on the cross, but maybe out of context with the Resurrection” and “we can really recognize and be drawn to maybe the first half of the beatitudes like there’s mourning, there’s persecution, there’s calls to mercy.” But “even more important is the promise and the Good News,” he said. And while “there is the cross in our life, as there was in Jesus’ life, ultimately there’s a resurrection.”

One practice he advises in the book to find hope amid life’s difficulties is to take what you’re experiencing in life and “go to the Gospels where Jesus experienced this or where Mary experiences it, and spend some time there with the word of God and prayer.”

Every chapter of the book, which is published by Ascension, ends with an exploration of what each beatitude looks like in the life of the Blessed Mother. “We see Mary experiencing all of these beatitudes,” he said. “But she’s also experienced the fulfillment of the promises.”

As Christians, he said, “a huge part of our witness, and therefore our evangelization, is the way in which we live hope.”

“All of us right now, who are Christians, are called to experience a blessedness no matter what else is going on,” he said. “But ultimately, it’s not a blessedness that is dependent or built upon our particular, immediate circumstances, but on the eternal fulfillment of God’s promise.”

The beatitudes have “a pilgrimage nature to them,” he said. “We’re in the place of poverty or of meekness or purity of heart or we’re hungry and thirsty. It’s where we are, but where we are going to is satisfaction. Where we’re going to is comfort and the beatitudes, they just offer us hope in it for the journey.”