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If you’re studying music in an advanced setting, one of the best ways to grow is by attending a master class with a virtuoso.

Usually, in that setting a group of top students gives a small recital in the presence of the master and an audience of other students. Then, the master coaches each performer through their performance again, bit by bit, for their benefit and for the audience. It’s like a music lesson on steroids.

Our Lord offers us just such a master class for the feast of All Saints in our Gospel reading of the beatitudes. Christ himself is the virtuoso. All the saints who have gone before us are on stage as the top performers. We, the students, gather as disciples to be elevated by the experience. The beatitudes themselves form the music of the performance, the score for the first movements of holiness. Lest that analogy seem inappropriate, consider how the passage begins: Jesus sees the crowds, ascends the mountain, takes a seat, and gathers his disciples for instruction. Those few words and actions are incredibly symbolic. Pope Benedict XVI comments that here, Jesus is assuming the role of the new “Moses,” the foretold prophet who will bestow a new covenant and law of love, leading them to the promised land of eternal life. After all, the original Moses also ascended a mountain, sat in authority, revealed the law and led them on a journey toward the Promised Land.

Given that context, we can see the connection: Jesus is teaching a master class. The beatitudes are addressed to disciples and meant to coach them on the way to the symphony of the Promised Land. Thus, they’re the introductory sheet music for both us and the saints who have gone before us as we walk with Jesus through this life toward heaven. We simply need to learn our parts and embody that music.

After all, the only people joining the choirs of heaven are angels and saints (both those canonized and not). If we want to be in heaven, we need to accept that God intends us to be saints and will make us saints if we let him. After all, a saint is only a sinner who got good at asking for God’s mercy and help. A good musician is someone who has played plenty of wrong notes but also accepted help and coaching to fix them.

One might wonder why Jesus gives us this score to study and perform to be saints? Why the beatitudes? Wouldn’t a passage about taking up our cross and following Jesus be better? Or perhaps one about proclaiming the Gospel? Yet when we pause to look at the beatitudes themselves, we see that all the essential notes and chords of our faith are present there, implicitly. For example: The cross is there, “Blessed are the persecuted … ,” and so is the Resurrection “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Baptism and confession are there: “Blessed are the clean of heart … .” So is the Eucharist: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness … .” The beatitudes are suffused with an implied catechism on faith working in love and mercy. Each beatitude implies faith and hope that our meekness, peacemaking and so on will be fulfilled in the kingdom to come, one where Jesus, who is love, triumphs.

This is also why the beatitudes are choices for special Masses such as weddings and funerals. The beatitudes reach out and touch all aspects of Christian life, especially at pivotal moments, or one might say, saint-making moments. Their music is fundamental for Christian life. What married couple hasn’t needed merciful hearts, or to be peacemakers? What grief-stricken family has not needed comfort in mourning, knowing that their hearts will only find healing in new life with Christ? By embracing the realities of life (and even the challenges) in faith, the beatitudes harmonize them to Christ and helps us rediscover joy. They invite us to see all aspects of life as useful in God’s project of making us saints.

One final note: It’s always interesting to consider “the reverse” of each beatitude to see what a lack of practice and disharmony reveals. Instead of blessed are the meek, we’d have blessed are the brash and rude. Blessed are the warmakers. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for gain. Et cetera.

When we look at the parts of the world we most lament, we always find that the beatitudes are in direct contradiction to the values behind what is lamentable. In contrast with the noise of the world, the beatitudes offer us the sublime music of the saints. Thanks be to God for that.

We’re not made for this world. We’re made to be saints. All we need is the courage to learn from the master, to practice, and to join in the music of eternity.