WEDNESDAY SEPT. 11, 2024
WEDNESDAY OF THE TWENTY THIRD WEEK OF THE ORDINARY TIME B
1 Corinthians 7:25-31
Luke 6:20-26
THE REAL MESSAGE OF THE BEATITUDES OR THOSE BLESSED
How can one be assumed blessed in a state of hunger, poverty, sorrow, weeping, hatred and persecution? It appears highly paradoxical in our human experiences. For in these states, human experience shows some element of lack, deprivation and complete hopelessness. Yet our Lord calls us to accept these as blessed and happiness that we need in this life.
Invariably, Jesus meant to point to the fact of man’s total dependence on God. That hunger of the physical makes one rely and confine in the supernatural, reclining on God to supply his needs and sustenance. Such attitude of reliance, faith and trust in the providence of God is a blessed one. By this man has no need to trust in his abilities and powers, or trust in his ego and what he can do for himself. Rather there is a whole shift of focus from self to the God with attendant faith and submissiveness to God’s grace and blessings.
Same goes for those who accept poverty and live in poverty. It is a rather unencumbered lifestyle that disposed us to trust in the provident God repose oneself in hope on God and trust in his supply of our needs and all our aspirations. And those that experience sorrows, persecution, hatred of men are equally blessed because such are the necessary disposition of men to be able to look beyond the worldly desires and joys into the eternal values and virtues that are hard to come about. For sorrows and hardships help expose the transient nature of our passing world with a further reliance of man on the eternal home where there is no sorrow. And the persecutions as submitted to by the saints and martyrs are equally same as they look beyond the pains of this passing world with resolute trust and hope in the blessedness of the world to come in eternity.
For Jesus therefore, nothing in this temporal world must be seen as permanent and satisfactory. Nothing in this temporal world must equally hold us hostage or deter us from reaching our eternal home and habitation. For everything here is temporal. And the joys in life as well are others are temporal and can be deceptive if we cling to it, hold on to it and pursue it at the expense of our eternal life and values.
So keep our gaze on the eternal life of glory and accepting those temporal discomforts that would have given us false and hopeless comforts lies the blessedness since it preserved us for the eternal life and points to us real, authentic and blessed life with God our maker and ultimate ending.
We are therefore urged to jettison worldly powers, wealth, pleasure and influence because they give false hope and false temporal happiness. Rather we should try to live above these and pursue true happiness which we must strive to gain. So the beatitude directs us on how to live, where to place our priority and who to submit our lives to. So what makes one blessed is not trusting in this ephemeral world but in anticipation, working and living with the hope and trust in God for the eternal world of salvation in Christ.
Saint Paul’s letter to the Corinthians makes this case explicit when he advised that married or unmarried states should not bother us. But whatever state one chooses must be geared towards eternal life, which is our ultimate goal. So even if you are married, live as if you are not. In the words of Saint Paul, he says, “let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the form of this world is passing away.”
The tendencies of tilting towards the evil of riches, pleasures, comforts, and general good life makes it sometimes impossible to make heaven. This is why deprivation, limitations, in the form of hunger, thirst, poverty are blessings and happiness to those in it since they point to higher values and aspirations to eternity becomes stronger.
Heavenly Father, our world offers us false joys and happiness. Grant us the discernment to understand your beatitudes and help us to cling to those eternal values even though tough and hard. May we aspire to live humbly, trusting in you, and holding forth to your promises. Guide us from false happiness, and false hope and fill our heart with the desire for genuine happiness and prosperity found in the beatitudes through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Fr Norbert Uchuno
