Sixth Sunday, Year C
Today’s readings teach us that true happiness, or beatitude, lies in the awareness of who we are and of what we are supposed to do. They remind us that we are all children of a loving Heavenly Father, and that we will be happy in this world and in Heaven only when we share our blessings here on earth with our brothers and sisters in need and work to uplift them, thus declaring our “option for the poor,” as Jesus did.
This idea comes out very clearly in our first reading today. Jeremiah shows us a curse, paired with its opposite, a beatitude of blessing, when he compares the wicked to a barren bush in a desert and the just to a well-watered tree growing near a running stream. In essence, this “beatitude” teaches us that if we choose God as our hope, our security, and our happiness, we will be blessed, truly happy.
On the other hand, if we choose human standards for our guides, ourselves as our source of security, and the meeting of our own needs and desires as our happiness, we will find ourselves living in increasing misery and confusion, that is, in woe.
Jeremiah tells us that the only source of lasting happiness is trust in God and hope in his promises. The manner in which one personally exercises one’s freedom of choice will also determine whether one will bring upon oneself and the world blessings or curses.
Wherever Jesus went, people were clamouring to get close to him. I wonder, were they aware of why they were clamouring to get close to Him? Yes, there were some people who knew He had healing powers, and they were clamouring to get close to be healed. However, there are a lot of others, thousands of others that would gather around Him each day to hear Him speak, to see what would happen. I am sure for some of them it was just entertainment.
In the second reading St. Paul teaches us that trusting in the resurrection of Jesus is the basis of our faith, of our own resurrection, and of our eternal bliss. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, believers are now welcomed into a new relationship with God as His sons and daughters. This means that all the blessings of the beatitudes are now available to us, provided we choose to follow them, for they codify, so to speak, the pattern of living Jesus established.
The Gospel reading of today gives us the four woes and blessings in Luke. These contradict the ideas about real happiness found in the Jewish culture and in our modern society. According to the Jewish and the modern notions, wealth, health, power, and influence are the true beatitudes.
The Beatitudes are technically known as “macarisms”, or blessings, from the Greek makarios, meaning “blessed” or “happy.” In today’s Gospel, Jesus instructs his disciples in the paradoxical blessedness of poverty, hunger, sorrow, and persecution because these contradict our natural expectations in every way.
“Blessed are those who are poor, hungry, weeping, hated, excluded, insulted, and denounced,” because in poverty, we recognize God’s reign; in hunger, his providence; in sorrow, true happiness; and in persecution, true joy. Experiencing these miseries opens the way for us to receive the true riches, food, comfort, and acceptance we can find only in his love and his presence here and in his kingdom forever.
The Beatitudes teach us how we should live, and what we should do. What makes one blessed is not simply poverty or hunger or sadness or suffering for the faith, but living these in the context of our commitment to Jesus and in his spirit of sharing.
Luke presents the Sermon on the Plain as following immediately upon the choosing of the twelve apostles. Therefore, one of the Fathers of the Church called this sermon “The Ordination Address to the Twelve.” Both the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke are also known as “The Compendium of Christian Doctrine,” In these two sermons we have the essence of Jesus’ teachings to his chosen apostles.
The introductory portion of the sermon consists of blessings and woes that reflect the real polarity in humanity’s economic and social living conditions: the rich vs poor; the satisfied vs the hungry; those laughing vs those grieving; the socially acceptable vs the outcast.
Each of the eight Beatitudes consisted of a pronouncement of blessedness (makarios) followed by who is blessed and why. Luke proposes that material poverty leads us to greater detachment from the things of this world, thereby allowing us to attach ourselves to spiritual values.
The blessings must be understood as eschatological statements that see and evaluate the present in terms of the future. In the same way, the woes pronounced upon the rich, the full, and those who laugh function as an expression of sadness, not because of the person’s present circumstances but because of what will ultimately be.