The Gospel of Luke begins the preaching of Jesus with the Sermon of the Mount, in this sermon Jesus teaches the 4 beatitudes unlike the Gospel of Matthew which are 8.
The Beatitudes of Luke are not virtues, nor habits. they are promises that constitute the true happiness of man, defined in another way they are the expression of the culture of excellence.
The idea of virtue arise from the desire for happiness. Aristotle explains that the soul possesses faculties: nutritive, locomotive, reproductive. Happiness represents for the soul the balance, the harmony of his faculties.
Because we have a soul we want to be naturally happy. Justice, the virtue by excellency responds to this desire, but happiness is an egoist desire.
Instead the beatitudes are not virtues, the law of the return, "you reap what you sow" is inserted in each beatitude. The Beatitudes have an unique structure, in each beatitude there is a spiritual gift and a return, a "for".
To understand this we must understand the triple division of man: body, soul and spirit.
We can speak of a "live according to the flesh", and a "live according to the spirit".
To practice the sin is to live according to the flesh. To live the spiritual gifts is to "live according to the spirit". We have to choose between two lifestyles, good and evil are ethical solutions of the human being.
The Beatitudes explain that when we live the gifts we receive blessings, the Beatitudes relate gifts with blessings, thence the "for" of the Beatitudes.
The spiritual gifts respond to the divine, to the desire for the good. The desire for the good is an edifying, constructive, benevolent, kind, progressive desire.
The Beatitudes, the blessings, and their gifts are perfections. The Beatitudes can only be understood in their true sense through the Spiritual Gift of Knowledge, not through reason. Thomas Aquinas explains that reason is about, is focused, in temporal things, but the Gift of Knowledge is focused in the eternal and immutable things.
The last sense of the beatitudes is the search of the perfection and the excellence, the search for the best that is in us.