6th Sunday ordinary (C)/ The Beatitudes

For Jesus, the poor are fortunate because they are capable of appreciating the good things he is bringing to them. They are like hungry guests invited to a grand feast. However, those who already have everything they wanted can hardly appreciate what Jesus is bringing to them because they are like sated people invited to a banquet. They are unable to appreciate the food.

There are some differences the way Matthew and Luke portrays Jesus discourse in Beatitudes: (1) Matthew described a selected group of disciples up to the mountain while Luke pictures Jesus coming down from the mountain and meeting a large group of disciples, of poor, and of disabled. (2) In Luke, Jesus is always conscious of his audience, “you poor,” whereas in Mt, he speaks more objectively about “the poor.” (3) While Matthew has nine beatitudes and no woes, Luke has four of each and he did not only rearranges the sequence of the beatitudes from Mt’s first, fourth, second and last; but the woes follow the reverse pattern of the beatitudes.

In the first reading, God gave assurance to Jeremiah that he should not be afraid to prophesy and tell the truth. God had chosen him from the very beginning, even before he was born. Like Jesus in the Gospel, he talked out all the things he need to say and just walked in front of them with full courage and determination. In the second reading St Paul gave the theological virtues, faith hope and love as a rule for a good Christian community. He wrote to the church in Corinth how a Christian community should be. Life in every Christian community must be based on love. This is in contrast to what the community of Jesus in the Gospel this is filled of pride, prejudice and doubt.

Luke wrote his gospel at a time of terrible social and religious persecution of believers in Christ. It was so severe that anyone professing to be a Christian knew for sure that he would be disowned by his own family, rejected by friends and excluded from the synagogue. One might even lost a right to inheritance. Even if he has lots of lands, the moment they declared their faith in Christ, they were automatically reduced to poverty. Christ called them blessed, because he assured them that whatever they lost, they will regain them all in the life after. But Jesus also says, “Woe to you who are rich because you already have all the comforts you are going to get.” If we set our hearts to worldly values, we will get them – but that is all we are ever get, nothing more.

Given the situation we have just described, how would you feel if you were called as one of the apostles? You knew that as soon as you answered “yes” to the call of Jesus, you would lose all your possessions and entitlements in the community, instantly becomes poor, the hated, the reviled and the excluded. In our struggles in our daily life we might experience the same sufferings, but in our desire to follow Jesus we should never surrender. We should rather hold fast to the promises of Jesus, that there are rewards that await us, far better than what we lost.

Practically speaking poverty in itself is not a blessing but a misfortune. In fact, all the qualifying factors mentioned in Luke's Beatitudes -- poverty, hunger, weeping, hatred, exclusion are all misfortunes. These are things no good parents would want for their children. Neither would God want these things for us, His children. We can understand Luke’s Beatitudes, if we look at the important clause which he adds at the end of the last beatitude, “on account of the Son of Man.” We do not simply suffer for nothing but for something. We can accept all trials in life, because we want to serve the people as an act of our love for God.

An author says: “The poorest person in the world is not the person who doesn’t have a coin. The poorest person in the world is the one who doesn’t have a vision. If you don’t have a dream, a goal and a purpose in life - you will never find God’s blessings and love in the midst of pains and trials in life”

Being poor in spirit means, we hunger for God’s help and mercy. People who are already rich, did not follow Jesus (because they think they already have everything), so they failed to see how Jesus multiplied the bread and how he healed the sick and cured the blind. They did not benefit much from the miracles and from the preaching of Jesus because they do not feel the need for the Messiah. Socrates said, “The first stage in search for knowledge is to realize that we are all ignorant.” Same is true with our search for holiness. If we want to be blessed and holy, we should realize that fact that we are all sinners and poor, and we are always in hunger for God’s mercy and forgiveness.

Inasmuch as we look forward with hope to God’s eternal rewards, we should not forget that there are some blessings which are not postponed to some future glory: Being in God’s love is a state of blessedness which exists here and now. It is not something into which the Christian will enter; it is something into which he has entered