BEATITUDES: A PORTRAIT OF ABUNDANACE

V/​ I will turn to you O God, 

R/​ to God who gives joy to my youth

V/​ Give me the Wisdom that sits by your throne; 

R/ that I may be counted among your children

Lord, in your all-providential plan, you have led me to this moment to rediscover me in your Word and Wisdom. Aid me to make this time of meditation and prayer enriching, transforming, and liberating for my well-being and others. Amen!

6TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, YR C

16th February 2025

Jeremiah 17:5-8; Psalm 1:1-6, 40(39):5; 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20; Luke 6:17, 20-26

I think it’s possible to read the beatitudes in Luke’s gospel as a summary of a central aspect of Old Testament faith and of the major prophets. Indeed, read in the light of Isaiah and Jeremiah we can more readily appreciate their eschatological dimension as well as their challenge to us.

In Old Testament terms, what makes the hungry and poor blessed? They are those who have not forgotten God and the need of salvation, they haven’t filled themselves with riches of any kind. This is the message of Deuteronomy chapter 32, verses10 to 18. God was with Israel in the desert and satisfied their needs in abundance. The same theme is found in Isaiah chapter 51: 1,7-8. It is those who are not filled but “look to the rock from which you were hewn” who are open to the message of deliverance; “fear not the reproach of men, and be not dismayed at their reviling.

And so it is those who were hungry in their remembrance of their belonging to God, who suffered in consequence, who will be filled and exalted.

Behold, my servants shall eat,

    but you shall be hungry;

behold, my servants shall drink,

    but you shall be thirsty;

behold, my servants shall rejoice,

    but you shall be put to shame;

 behold, my servants shall sing for gladness of heart,

    but you shall cry out for pain of heart,

    and shall wail for anguish of spirit.

This vision of a blessed future for those who are poor, hungry and weeping is shared by Jeremiah as a promise to them of joy and abundance

For the Lord has ransomed Jacob,

    and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him.

… they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord,

over the grain, the wine, and the oil,…

    …I will turn their mourning into joy,

    I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow. (Jer 31:10 -13)

So, in today’s gospel reading Jesus is effectively saying that all the promises made to Israel are now known in their fullness in his coming to them. The blessings coming from the remembrance of God, the woes coming from forgetfulness and rejection of God are now all fulfilled in the response to him.

The challenge for us, today, is to grasp what this means for our own relationship with him.

It may help to recall St John-Paul the second’s  assertion that the Beatitudes are a description of Jesus and so look at all that the New Testament says of his poverty, his hunger for righteousness, his weeping over loss and in his agony (see Hebrews 7 – 8). Every experience of our own poverty, thirst for justice, rejection on account of our faith, however slight, makes us more like him and so closer to the joy and blessedness of the New Heaven and New Earth. So, too, does every effort we make to become like him in his poverty, hunger and thirst, material and spiritual.

John of the Cross helps us in understanding what becoming like Christ really involves. At the beginning of The Ascent of Mount Carmel he advises us to develop those good habits which keep us from simply following our own desires and attractions, studying Christ’s life so that we follow the desires of his heart, not ours.

Jesus says that his meat is to do the Father’s will, not his own, so John encourages us to develop and direct our capacity for choice, our will, so that it is not ruled by our inclinations to go always for what is easy or pleasurable, for what gratifies immediate desires but stifles our hunger for God and makes choosing his way ever more unpalatable or difficult to follow. 

Jesus “emptied himself”, did not “cling to” equality with God in a desire for possession. To imitate Jesus, John says, we too need to develop a habitual disinclination to possessiveness, whether of material or spiritual goods.

Following John’s counsels can help us towards becoming like Jesus who, though he was rich became poor, (cf 2Cor 8:9), embodying the Beatitudes in our way of living.