4th Sunday Ordinary Time Year A
January 30, 2011
The Beatitudes
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The last phrase is always good for comment: ‘the kingdom of heaven is theirs’. There’s another phrase that we often use: ‘They get it!’
or ‘So and so just doesn’t get it!’ Let’s see how it works here:
Blessed are the poor in spirit - they get it! Blessed are the pure of
heart - they get it!
What is it they get? As we said last week, they are open to the intervention of God making radical change happen.
God is intervening in our thinking and our attitudes, and the qualities
listed here are the equivalent of open eyes to perceive and open arms
to welcome this revolutionary intervention.
'Beatitude’ = blessed or blessing. So, I used to think
these eight ‘beatitudes’ were nicely packaged ‘blessings’ from Jesus.
Now I don’t think so! What about the ‘IF’ - not written but definitely
understood: IF you are poor in spirit, the kingdom of heaven is yours.
IF not, you still have the door firmly shut, blocking God’s approach,
impeding change, progress, evolution. Equally the door is shut on human
relationships and progress.
Kipling got it. I’m not sure his poem has the same message as Jesus, but he sees the challenge involved in living. See: ‘If’: http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm
Brian, the editor of Catholica, had something to say about this last
week, definitely with the IF in place. His remarks illustrate No. 6:
‘Blessed are the pure of heart...’ Seehttp://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?id=65193
...
In a way our entire lives – physical as well as intellectual, emotional and spiritual – is the very process of learning to live ‘outside’ all the lies we construct around ourselves, or our parents, peers and society construct around ourselves...
These eight short crunchy statements are challenges. They represent the bar set at a certain height. They represent essential, necessary qualities in the human person. They represent the key to the maze that is life: the necessary way to turn when you come to a fork in the road, a decision moment. They describe what it is to be an authentic/true human person. They are what Jesus came to teach us.
On the other hand, yes, they do declare that many unlikely ones have already got it, in spite of being rejects in social terms.
We have to make these qualities real for ourselves, cutting through whatever blockage might come from the language. My understanding at the moment goes something like this:
Poor in spirit: something opposite to ‘high and mighty’ as we sometimes see that attitude in managers. It’s an ‘I know best’ attitude. ‘Do it exactly my way. You are here to serve me.’ At his last dinner with his friends, Jesus pointed to himself as the embodiment of this standard: ‘Do you understand’ he said ‘what I have done to you? You call me Master and Lord, and rightly; so I am. If I, then, the lord and master, have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet’ (Jn 13:13-14). Have the attitude in yourselves of being the servant to your neighbour, to your employee, to your brother, to your wife, to your children..
The gentle: not well translated as ‘the meek’, which sounds like ‘the weak’. It goes without saying that we have to be strong (even just to survive, let alone to be effective in our community). Here the gentle one is strong, opposite to the other strong one, the bully.
Those who mourn: those who feel for the other in their pain or loss. We’ve seen examples in our leaders, the PM and Qld Premier, towards the flood victims. They felt for the people who were suffering, they showed compassion, they were sym-pathetic - i.e., they suffered with them, they identified with them, they took their sufferings into themselves. The opposite attitude is ‘heartless’, cold, closed off. People who have to be efficient sometimes come across as cold. I think in modern society we are getting better at this.
To have a hunger for justice is the opposite to appeasement and to defeatism. Most of the time, I’m afraid, we settle for one or other of these: ‘Don’t rock the boat’ or ‘What’s the point of protesting; your can’t change anything.’ We all long for justice, particularly when we see people being crushed by others - like the refugees, perhaps. But hungry for justice, as they are hungry for the freedom to live in their human dignity?
The first four qualities seem to be the basic ones. For the sake of brevity, this is enough.
These Eight Standards ought to be central in our thinking and in our catechetics. At first glance they read like a puzzle, but over time we intuitively know what they mean. They are the key attitudes in which the ego has to die for us to live in the truth. They are a call to union, a call to drop the duality that puts ‘me’ over against the other. Therefore they are the way of love.