{"id":4487,"date":"2026-10-30T10:00:54","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/?p=4487"},"modified":"2026-10-28T10:53:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T15:53:42","slug":"weekly-reflection-november-1-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/weekly-reflection-november-1-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Reflection \u2013 November 1, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Got Attitude for the Beatitudes?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the children lived at home and we had a house guest, we invited visitors to participate in our family prayer time. As one way to record their visit, we pulled out our gratitude journal, and everyone, including the guest, named events or things for which we were grateful.<\/p>\n

But when one particular guest stayed at our house, instead of recording our gratitude, we read the Gospel of the day with the two teenagers and one pre-teen lounging in our daughter\u2019s bedroom. Today’s gospel, The Beatitudes, was the reading that day.<\/p>\n

After someone read the Gospel, we decided it would be fun to guess which beatitude attribute we each had. And what would be better than knowing our beatitude? Its corresponding reward or gift, of course! So we named each beatitude and its corresponding reward:<\/p>\n

Beatitude: poor in spirit | Reward: the Kingdom of heaven is theirs
\nBeatitude: they who mourn | Reward: will be comforted
\nBeatitude: the meek | Reward: will inherit the land
\nBeatitude: they who hunger and thirst for righteousness | Reward: will be satisfied
\nBeatitude: the merciful | Reward: will be shown mercy
\nBeatitude: clean of heart | Reward: will see God
\nBeatitude: the peacemakers | Reward: will be called children of God.
\nBeatitude: they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness | Reward: theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
\nBeatitude: Insulted, persecuted, and every kind of evil falsely uttered against you because of Him | Reward: reward will be great in heaven<\/p>\n

Then, we said a prayer and talked about each person’s most prominent, Christ-like beatitude while he\/she sat there, face flushed and expectant. Even though our guest didn\u2019t know us as well as we knew each other, to our surprise, she accurately chose the beatitude we would have selected for each family member!<\/p>\n

Most of us don’t recognize the virtues others see in us. Our faces appear in the mirror, but what if we see only a slim shadow of our true selves in relation to Christ? Looking for beatitudes in others is the opposite of removing a splinter from their eyes. If you remove their splinter, the beam in your own eye is still lodged there plain-as-day for all to see.<\/p>\n

Turning your mirror to reflect another\u2019s goodness has an added bonus because the act itself is exercising the beatitudes. And practicing beatitudes is a form of working on your own eye beam.
\nLike Michael Jackson sings in, Man in the Mirror: \u201cI\u2019ve been a victim of a selfish kind of love\u2026 I\u2019m starting with the man in the mirror.\u201d<\/p>\n

Author Lisa Kelly says in her essay \u201cBlessed are Those in the Crowd\u201d states: \u201cThe Beatitudes are less about who I am and more about how I see everyone else. They are about seeing others through the eyes of Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Frances Smit<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

Reflection provided by diocesan.com. Reprinted with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Got Attitude for the Beatitudes? When the children lived at home and we had a house guest, we invited visitors to participate in our family prayer time. As one way to record their visit, we pulled out our gratitude journal, and everyone, including the guest, named events or things for which we were grateful. But when one particular guest stayed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4487"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4488,"href":"https:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4487\/revisions\/4488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}