Revelation 7:2–4, 9–14
1 John 3:1–3
Matthew 5:1–12a
Today as we remember all the holy men and women before us, the Church gives us the gospel of the Beatitudes. We ought not to think that all those holy men and women who come to mind exhibited all these beatitudes. Perhaps they only revealed one of them. Maybe the ones we know were shining lights for one or two times in their lives. But when we remember them today, it is for that light, for the twinkling of goodness, humility and greatness that we once saw and experienced.
We use the word ‘saints’ to speak of the holy ones whose company we stand in awe of today. But Jesus uses a different word. Jesus speaks of blessedness, of being blessed. Blessed are the poor…This is to help us look at the notion of holiness from a different angle. Jesus invites us to see blessedness, to see how people are blessed. Jesus invites us to see that these lives are lives lived in God, grounded in God, in communion with him. In other words, in these areas of behavior God was being revealed in this person in this world.
When the blessed man or woman knows they are poor in their hearts but rich in God, then they are living in the world as God wished them to live, they are living in his Kingdom. When someone mourns because of sin, or loss or the experience of mortality, they are in effect accepting that these are not ultimate and this will lead to consolation. When someone is meek and does not resort to violence or bloodshed, they will live beyond the destruction and inherit the earth created by God. They will see the whole of creation. When the person seeks for a better world, this is not a waste of time. That new world will come. Their hope will not be in vain. When someone shows mercy, reaches out to accept, to hold, and ceases judgement and condemnation, then what they have given will come and envelop them. When you and I cling to God with our hearts, then we will be able to look around us and see God active in the world. To see God in the world, that is a sign of being blessed. When peace governs our approach to people and situations, people will wake up and know that we are related to God as his children. When being blessed means being persecuted because it threatens the ways of our world and our society, it means that we are in truth reflecting the ways of the Kingdom, an alternate way of living. Our life shows a goodness that challenges evil. (see John Shea, The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers: Feasts, Funerals and Weddings (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2004).
Being blessed means accepting my life as a gift. For blessings are above all gifts. A blessed person is someone beyond referring to themselves as central. Their “I” is known to come from God. They could say, it is not I who am doing this, it is God within me. What attracts us to them, or should, is the selflessness with which they approach people, the earth and human experience. Blessedness comes from seeing all as gift and responding to it as gift.
Today let us recall those we know or heard about who accepted themselves for who they were, who understood themselves as always in the hands of God. Let us for one day at least rejoice with them that they are in the home of the Father who was not afraid to call them his daughters and sons—the Father who clothes them and gives them a feast because they responded to his blessings and his hope for them.
~Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB
