6th Sunday, Beatitudes

 

Today the Church gives us the Beatitudes from the Gospel of Luke. The Beatitudes help us to have a positive view of life and seek the life to come.

As we now examine each Beatitude, think about how these words help us to accept life’s difficulties today and are means to seek heaven.

“Blessed are you, who are poor.” Some view being poor as though it were a curse or something to avoid for the sake of a better life. However, to be poor in spirit means that we come to understand and accept-- we truly own nothing because all we have is a gift from God. This beatitude reminds us to follow the stewardship way of life. As a steward of God’s gifts, we should use our time, talent and treasure as God desires. Am I giving my time, talent and treasure as well as I ought? When I become aware of my intelligence, wealth, success, gifts and talents-- do I give God the credit. If I have a financial hardship do I trust God to take care of all my needs and abandon myself to His care?

“Blessed are those who are hungry, for you will be satisfied.” Some are able to eat what they want, when the want it. As a child, I believed only rich people ate steaks or rich people went out to eat, because my family rarely went to a restaurant and if we did, our parents would order for us. We didn’t have a choice as to the foods, we could eat. But, we didn’t care, because we were just happy to eat out.

This beatitude also refers to those who hunger for righteousness. We hunger to be holy. How many of us wake up in the morning and pray to Jesus, “I want to become a saint!” “I desire to be holy and virtuous!” We can grow in holiness by coming to daily Mass, going to confession weekly or monthly, praying the Rosary everyday, daily reading a paragraph from one of the Gospels and meditating on the life of Jesus and spending an hour with Jesus in Eucharistic Adoration. If you want to hunger and thirst for righteousness, wake up every morning and pray, “Jesus, help me to become a saint!”

“Blessed are those who are now weeping, for you will laugh”— As Christians we are to comfort those who suffer, especially the loss of a loved one. We should attend funerals and comfort those who mourn. We should pray for those who have died and offer Masses for the repose of their soul. We should also comfort those who go through difficult situations, such as illness, tragedies, divorce or family hardship. If we are parents with teens—we should listen to them—and support them during their difficult time as they mature into adulthood. In heaven, we will rejoice and laugh looking back at how we endured sadness in this life. We will laugh because it will make us smile, because the crosses we embraced at the time seemed so big, but were in fact, much smaller than we thought and the Lord helped us to carry the Cross, when we thought we were carrying it alone.

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day. Behold your reward will be great in heaven.”

Not many of us are insulted for our faith, primarily because we don’t express it to others. Catholics suffer persecution when we express our faith among family and co-workers, and talk about topics such as abortion, contraception, the Blessed Virgin Mary or the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

Our Lord was spurned and avoided by men, we say that we want to follow Jesus and be like Him, but are we ready to embrace the difficult truth that imitating Christ means being acquainted with suffering?

If Jesus suffered, was rejected and persecuted, who are we to think, we are better than Him and can escape them? Rather, we should rejoice in sharing in Christ’s sufferings and be glad for we are more conformed to Christ, when we endure a small portion of His rejection and pain.

Jesus then give us the woes. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.”

There is nothing wrong, with being rich, with being filled, with laughing, or when others speak well of us. Rather, we see these as warning signs.

The proclamations of woes are not condemnations; they are not an expression of hatred, or envy or of hostility. The point is not condemnation, but a warning that is intended to save.

They are warnings signs that if we are not living the beatitudes, we risk the loss of the deepest happiness found in God alone and in heaven.

It’s not that we should avoid hunger, poverty, tears and rejection. But, as Pope St. Gregory the Great warned, “Rather there is a danger that if the prosperous are not careful, they may love their pilgrimage more than their homeland and transform the supplies for their journey into an impediment for their arrival.”

Suffering, borne well, on the other hand, can increase our desire for heaven and help prepare us to receive the joy that is to come.

If we life our life, based upon the Beatitudes, God will give us a grace of true conversion of heart, by turning away from sin, turning toward God and opening our heart to our neighbor and we will remember, that we are on a journey, through a place that is not our home. But rather we heading toward our final destination of heaven, our true and lasting home.

Today, ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to help live the beatitudes. She is a good mother and will always watch over us and help us to through this valley of tears to reach the harbor of salvation.