Q&A WITH EUGENE AUCOIN, AUTHOR OF THE BEATITUDES: EIGHT STEPS TO INNER PEACE AND HAPPINESS

The Beatitudes are a familiar Gospel passage (Matthew 5:3-12) and a teaching of Jesus that still resonates with many people today. In The Beatitudes: Eight Steps to Inner Peace and Happiness, author Eugene Aucoin guides us with kindness and compassion through each of the Beatitudes. He explores how we tend to repeat the same mistakes in our lives, how Christ’s eight-step recipe for inner peace can show us the way to true happiness and help us through life’s challenges, and some practical ways to make it all work.

He will present a free webinar on the book tomorrow, Tuesday, October 29, 10am-11am (EST): to register, go HERE.

Q: What led you to write this book about the Beatitudes for today’s readers?

A: As a conflict mediator for many years, and in my volunteer work with dying patients, I have seen many people experience painful emotions of various kinds, and craving inner peace, as most of us have also experienced at one time or another. Self-help methods rarely work, so I wrote this book to help readers discover, in a new way, Jesus’ unique eight-step recipe for lasting inner peace and joy.

Q: Why are inner peace and happiness so elusive? How can we experience them in our lives?

A: We’re built for the high sea but remain moored to the pier, prisoners of our own ego.

We generally seek beatitude by trying to satisfy our ego’s never-ending demands, but that impossible task only creates a constant feeling of missing out on this or that. In our increasing efforts to serve our ego, we’re dying to live. Our prison break is through the Beatitudes because only they can satisfy our infinite capacity for happiness.  

Q: How does Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount continue to speak to us nearly 2,000 years later? How can his words address our many worries and search for happiness?

A: Jesus’ Sermon is more relevant than ever. The proof is that the use of antidepressants has soared in the last 12 years in the most prosperous countries – doubling in some, quadrupling in others – and all this despite the marketplace trying to provide us with what passes for happiness. The resulting anguish everywhere fosters the deepening world crises. We need Jesus’ solution today more than ever.

Q: How can we apply the Beatitudes in practical ways to our lives?

A: To apply the Beatitudes, we don’t need to change fundamentally who we are. We are all different, so it’s not one-size-fits-all. By first understanding ourselves better, we can then leverage our own personality, our preferences, even our passions, to achieve, in ways that are most natural to each of us, Jesus’ recipe for lasting happiness.

Q: Where have you seen the Beatitudes transform someone’s life and bring them closer to God?

A: While I was offering communion to a dying, hospitalized woman recently, she burst into tears because she couldn’t remember the words to the Lord’s Prayer, for she had not prayed it for so long. She was asking God’s forgiveness. When I said it was a good example of what Jesus must have meant by “Blessed are those who mourn,” her tears became ones of relief and joy, and she felt closer to God than ever.

Eugene Aucoin is a retired human resources director and university professor. He has spoken around the world about nurturing human potential, but his passion is sharing his love for the teachings of Jesus. His first book – Has Science Killed God? – won Asia’s best Catholic book of the year in theology in 2020. His latest book, with Novalis, is The Beatitudes: Eight Steps to Inner Peace and Happiness. Eugene also gives seminars about his topics.