People normally think of blessedness as things like having a social status, an admirable job, a big house, a beautiful wife, loving husband, good health, intelligent kids, etc.: the list can go on and on. Similarly when people think of poverty, misery, mourning, imprisonment, they tend to think of them as something bad, even as a curse that falls upon us. However, Jesus' Beatitudes really challenge or even defy our usual way of thinking: what we normally think of bad luck may, in fact, be a blessing in God's eyes. To those who are in suffering, in agony, beset by poverty or a low social status, the Beatitudes are a promise, a hope that what they undergo on earth is not final. God will comfort them and redeem them by giving to them what rightly belong to them, all that he has prepared for them from before the creation of the world. Only in God is there the final justice and only God has the final say. That is why we should not be afraid and should never give up hope.