New books are friends, not yet found. I have to hold them close, open them up and not be afraid to enter their innermost borders. While they almost always are a treat for the mind, it is more rare when your hands love them just as much. Today’s publishers don’t put as much money into making a book comfortable to hold, and frankly we probably don’t want them to do so because of the expense.

And yet the book I’m delving into now has all the aesthetic qualities I could ever wish for in a tome. Just the right weight, just the right size. On the heavier side but probably only 6 inches tall, hard-bound with thick paper pages, a light colored cover and a particular shade of red for its endleaf. The constitution as a whole is perfectly suited to its miraculous text. It feels in my hands as the one and only book that should ever matter in my life, the one I will cling to and hide amongst my skirts to sneakily read bits between my chores. Like the semi-Cinderella in Ever After and her beloved Utopia by Thomas More or Marianne Dashwood’s pocket sonnets of Shakespeare.

I’m reading a gift at present. It was literally a gift from my husband and, I believe, a gift of faith from my father in heaven: Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI.

Words are so amazing. I should stop being surprised, but my eyes are always looking at a new world. Something is always in bloom, growing, becoming new. And this book really is the epitomy of the itty bitty miraculous book.

I take it in small sections, as no spiritual scholar am I. It is immensely readable to any lay person, I only digest such reading very slowly. But when I pick it up, anytime I pick it up, my eyes begin on a fresh paragraph and Scripture as I know it is turned upside down. This morning’s passage was no different and is what prompted me to share with you.

I’m half hesitant because maybe I’m mostly a fool and should have seen this other side of the Scripture before. Don’t be afraid to tell me, if you have thought or understand this point before. Actually, in the bit I’m about to quote the Holy Father does say that I should have known. haha Yet, my point today remains that I love learning about Jesus and this book succeeds for me, in every form. (The bolded text is my own emphasis to highlight what I found so revealing.)

“The Beautitudes are the transposition of Cross and Resurrection into discipleship. But they apply to the disciple because they were first paradigmatically lived by Christ himself.

This becomes even more evident if we turn now to consider Matthew’ verrsion of the Beatitudes (cf. Mt 5:3-12). Anyone who reads Matthew’s text attentively will realize that the Beatitudes present a sort of veiled biography of Jesus, a kind of portrait of his figure.“

I’d write more or edit more or both, but I want to get back to reading. Go read your Beautitudes too. lol

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