"With only a little effort, all the beatitudes can be memorized. Once learned by heart, we carry within us for the rest of our lives a short summary of the teaching of Jesus Christ: the whole gospel in a grain of salt.

"Some churches see to it that the beatitudes become engraved in our hearts while we are still children. In the Orthodox church it is customary to sing the beatitudes every Sunday during the first procession, when the gospel book is carried out of the sanctuary into the main part of the church and back into the sanctuary again to be placed on the altar. Week after week the words are sung until they reach so deep a place that late in life, when the face in the mirror belongs to a stranger, these words will still shine like pebbles in a stream.

"Anything sung is easily memorized."

To Practice: What sacred texts have your memorized? Memorize the Beatitudes or another essential teaching from your tradition.

Jim Forest in The Ladder of the Beatitudes