Make Your Own Beautitudes

This week's preaching Scripture is from the Gospel of St. Matthew, the 5th chapter -- a familiar text, to be sure: the Beautitudes (5:1-12).
These are the "Blessed are the _____________, for _________________ . . . you can fill in the blanks.
Jesus was in teaching mode here, according to Matthew. There were lots of people hungry to hear him, and ready to listen. These are, according to the Evangelist, the first words of Christian teaching. Real disciples follow them. Divine commandments, as it were, calling for a higher kind of right-living that sets those who follow apart from others who do not.
Proposition: Jesus sets a really, really high standard of behavior for his disciples.
Question: Is it too high for us to follow, even too high to aim for?
Here's what I think:
Christian discipleship is not easy. It never was meant to be. Look what happened to Jesus the Christ himself? Things didn't exactly turn out so well for him in human terms.
If we don't aim for this standard of behavior, we are not truly his disciples. That seems pretty clear. Yet we are pulled constantly away from this kind of "blessedness". It is very, very hard.
The only example we have of how it is done, truly, is with Jesus himself.
Blessed are -- the poor in spirit . . . if your heart hurts, there is hope, he said;
Blessed are -- those who mourn . . . in loss there will be healing, he promised;
Blessed are -- the meek . . . but meek does not equal doormat, he lived;
Blessed are -- those who hunger and thirst for righteousness . . . you are the real agents of change, and he was;
Blessed are -- the merciful . . . it costs us nothing, he said;
Blessed are the pure in heart . . . for God has a soft spot for optimists, he believed;
Blessed are the peacemakers . . . because sometimes real peace means division, he knew;
And so on . . . .
Do we even have a shot of fulfilling his charge in these powerful, ancient, popular words?