The Revolution Jesus Preached: Living the Sermon on the Mount Today
Insights from Thomas Merton and Joseph Cardijn
Let’s start with a question that has haunted contemplatives and activists for two thousand years:
What if we actually lived the Sermon on the Mount?
Not just studied it.
Admire it from a safe distance.
Or turning it into comforting spiritual quotes for social media.
But lived it — in our workplaces, neighborhoods, political choices, and daily encounters with power and poverty, with courage and determination.
Jesus, without any weapons or manifestos, preached a vision on a small hill that was more like a sand dune along Lake Michigan than a towering mountain. This vision was so radical that it has terrified every empire since, including, at times, the Church itself.
Today, I want to explore that revolution through the eyes of two 20th-century figures who refused to let the Sermon on the Mount stay trapped in the pages of scripture:
Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who found in silence a fierce prophetic voice against war and racism,
and Joseph Cardijn, the Belgian priest who empowered young workers to claim their dignity and transform their world.
Both discovered the same truth:
The Sermon on the Mount isn’t a “beautiful impossibility.”
It’s the blueprint for a new kind of humanity, a humanity filled with hope and optimism.
What Jesus Actually Said
Let’s be honest. What Jesus said that day wasn’t comforting:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit...
Blessed are those who mourn...
Blessed are the meek...
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness...
Blessed are the merciful...
Blessed are the pure in heart...
Blessed are the peacemakers...
Blessed are those who are persecuted...”
This isn’t self-help.
It’s not “positive thinking.”
It’s not “singing Kumbaya by the campfire.”
It’s an upside-down revolution. A complete reversal of every power system—ancient or modern—that tells us success, wealth, and control are the goals of life.
Merton’s Contemplative Reading
Thomas Merton understood something vital: you can not “figure out” the Beatitudes with analysis alone. You have to see them with your whole being.
He wrote:
“The whole Gospel… is summed up in the mystery of the Cross and of the Risen Christ. But the Sermon on the Mount is the practical spelling out of what it means to follow Christ in this mystery.” (The Climate of Monastic Prayer)
For Merton, the Beatitudes describe reality as God sees it.
The poor in spirit aren’t blessed because poverty is good, but because they’ve been freed from illusions—those walls we build between ourselves, God, and others.
Cardijn’s Social Reading
Joseph Cardijn read the Beatitudes with the eyes of young, exhausted factory workers in early 20th-century Belgium. For them, Jesus’ words weren’t abstract ideals—they were a manifesto of hope and dignity.
Cardijn gave them a world-changing but straightforward method:
See. Judge. Act.
See – What’s really happening around you?
Judge – What does the Gospel say about it?
Act – What can we do together to change it?
He saw the “poor in spirit” not as pious dreamers but as the economically crushed—those who had nothing left to lose.
The “meek” weren’t weak; they were the ones who refused to play the world’s game of domination.
When Jesus Said, “Turn the Other Cheek”
Jesus didn’t stop at the Beatitudes. He said things that still scandalize us:
“Do not resist an evildoer...
If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also…
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”
Merton wrestled with those words during the Cold War and the Vietnam War. His nonviolence wasn’t passive—it was intensely active.
He wrote:
“The meekness and nonviolence which Christ extols in the Gospel prospers in this world not by cleverness and calculation, but by a divine instinct... It risks everything on the invisible.”
For Merton, “turning the other cheek” didn’t mean surrender. It meant refusing to let violence define the terms of the encounter. It was a declaration of spiritual freedom:
“You cannot make me your enemy.”
Cardijn on Dignity and Resistance
Cardijn saw the same scripture being twisted to keep people docile. Factory owners told workers: “Be meek, accept your lot—it’s God’s will.”
His response was bold:
True Christian meekness organizes for justice.
Going the second mile didn’t mean tolerating abuse—it meant reclaiming agency.
“See what’s happening. Judge whether it reflects God’s will. Then act together to change it.”
Faith wasn’t an escape—it was fuel for transformation.
“Your Kingdom Come”
At the center of the Sermon on the Mount is the Lord’s Prayer.
And at the center of that Prayer:
“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
This isn’t about waiting for heaven someday.
It’s about bringing heaven to Earth—now.
Merton wrote:
“Action is charity looking outward to others, and contemplation is charity drawn inward to its divine source.” (Contemplative Prayer)
For him, praying “Your kingdom come” means aligning ourselves with God’s work of transformation. A contemplative who truly prays cannot remain indifferent to war, racism, poverty, or injustice.
Prayer, when rightly understood, doesn’t just comfort us in the face of war, racism, poverty, or injustice. It politicizes us in love, compelling us to act for social change.
Cardijn’s “On Earth As It Is in Heaven”
Cardijn asked: If God’s will is done in heaven, what does that look like here?
Would there be child labor in heaven?
Would anyone work without dignity?
Would wages fail to feed a family?
If not, then those conditions must change on Earth.
This wasn’t Marxism—it was Christianity taken seriously. The Sermon on the Mount at face value.
Building on Rock, Not Sand
Jesus closed his Sermon with a simple image:
“Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them is like a wise man who built his house on rock.”
The difference isn’t between those who hear and those who don’t.
It’s between those who act and those who don’t.
The question isn’t whether the Sermon on the Mount is practical—it’s whether we’re ready to be impractical by the world’s standards and revolutionary by heaven’s.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are those persecuted for justice’s sake.
The kingdom is coming. The revolution continues.
Questions for your Small Groups or Reflection time.
Is the Sermon on the Mount really possible to live today?
How can we balance Merton’s contemplation with Cardijn’s action?
What might these teachers say about today’s issues—war, poverty, technology, climate change?
How do we stay grounded and avoid burnout while living this vision?
What small, practical steps can we take this week to live out the Beatitudes?
Let’s close those Catholic schools which are so expensive that the poor are excluded; and use the resources for something else which includes the poor.
Thank you for writing this reflection, Richard. I found it compelling: to reflect and act in God’s name.