“Jesus, when He saw how great was their number, went up on to the mountain-side; there He sat down, and His disciples came about Him. And He began speaking to them; this was the teaching He gave.
Gospel of S. Matthew, 5: 1-12 [link]
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit; the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
Blessed are the patient; they shall inherit the land.
Blessed are those who mourn; they shall be comforted.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for holiness; they shall have their fill.
Blessed are the merciful; they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart; they shall see God.
Blessed are the peace-makers; they shall be counted the children of God.
Blessed are those who suffer persecution in the cause of right; the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
Blessed are you, when men revile you, and persecute you, and speak all manner of evil against you falsely, because of me…'”
Let us summarise the so-called Beatitudes of the Gospel reading above, and then throw them back into the Old Testament reading, for the roots of these teachings of our Lord in the gospel can already be found in the Law that He had given to the people centuries ago, through the ministry of the prophet and law-giver Moses.
Consider that it is above all the virtue of humility that undoes the pride of our first parents in the earliest story of the Bible, in the book of Genesis. The serpent tells Adam and Eve, If you eat of that fruit, you human beings can become gods, and be independent of God. And then God becomes a human being and teaches us how to be dependent on Him once more, teaching us humility to the point of giving Himself up as a criminal to suffer and die for our crimes.
Humility is a wonderful turning of the tables on the ruinous serpent in the Garden. He teaches us to be proud, we refuse and do the opposite. And so, Christ says in the gospel, Blessed are the poor in spirit, the humble. Make yourself small and God will lift you higher, sit yourself at the end of the table and the master of the table will honour you by calling you to a higher place. That is another one of His parables, of course.
When we get humility down correctly, the other beatitudes fall into place, because humility before God leads to a submission to His Law – His desire and guidance for our lives. What is the summary of this Law? Christ says it is (a) the love of God for His sake, and (b) the love of neighbour for God’s sake also, but we would be more God-like if we loved our neighbours for who or what they are also – made in the image of the Holy One. The Law teaches us to love and so makes us gentle. Blessed the gentle!
We begin to look at the world around us with the eyes of God, and we are horrified by what sin has made of it, we are terrified by what the wickedness of the human heart has wrought upon the Creation. Our sins, and the sins of others. Blessed are they who mourn for the lack of justice! What shall we do about this? We shall pray, yes, but we shall work for the restoration of justice, in so far as we can, even if only in our homes and local communities. We shall attempt to restore justice and righteousness. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for what is just, what is right! People may hurt us, or obstruct our efforts. Shall we retaliate? No, because there is another command… Blessed the merciful, blessed they who forgive… dear Father, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. We are no Saints ourselves, you see, although we can become Saints by the grace of God, but in the meantime we must bring our own disordered lives before the Holy One, so that sin is destroyed within us, and the working of death ended within us. Blessed the pure, the purified, they who seek holiness and receive it from God. And having learned to forgive, we shall teach others to forgive also, for blessed are the peacemakers, who will be called sons and daughters of God.
“To honest doing and patient suffering betake you, men of humble heart wherever you be, men obedient to His will; it may be, when the hour of the Lord’s vengeance comes, you shall find refuge… No need, then, to blush for wayward thoughts that defied Me; gone from thy midst the high-sounding boast; no room, in that mountain sanctuary of Mine, for pride henceforward; a poor folk and a friendless I will leave in thy confines, but one that puts its trust in the Lord’s name. The remnant of Israel, strangers now to treachery and wrong, the true word ever on their lips! Yonder flock may graze and lie down to rest, none to dismay it.”
Prophecy of Sophonias (aka. Zephanyah), 2: 3, 3: 11-13 [link]
The prophet Zefanyah here takes us into the Old Testament, and lists the virtues he desires of his fellow countrymen: humility before God and before His Law, integrity, attachment to the Holy Name, honesty, peace. We see honesty, gentleness and peace mentioned in the beatitudes of the gospel reading, integrity and honesty are desired by Christ, who repeatedly condemns their opposite: hypocrisy. That we live these virtues out because of an attachment for God – for theological reasons – means that (in the words of the prophet) we seek refuge in the name of the Lord.
All of this implies that, in our spiritual lives, we become like little children, humble before our common Father, desirous to do His will, to become like Him. This is S. Paul’s theme in our second reading this weekend. It is rather interesting that the proud ones of this world often look down on faithful Christians and on the inheritance of the Church as something of the past, something ‘medieval,’ something to be progressed away from… and then S. Paul here says, those whom the world thinks common and contemptible are the ones God has chosen. It is not that we are necessarily common and contemptible, but that we are seen as such by the worldly (those ‘in the world’s fashion,’ as below) as we make ourselves servants to others in humility, in this way making our treasures in heaven rather than here below.
And God our Lord picks us up, glorifies us, becomes our everything.
“Consider, brethren, the circumstances of your own calling; not many of you are wise, in the world’s fashion, not many powerful, not many well born. No, God has chosen what the world holds foolish, so as to abash the wise, God has chosen what the world holds weak, so as to abash the strong. God has chosen what the world holds base and contemptible, nay, has chosen what is nothing, so as to bring to nothing what is now in being; no human creature was to have any ground for boasting, in the presence of God. It is from Him that you take your origin, through Christ Jesus, Whom God gave us to be all our wisdom, our justification, our sanctification, and our atonement; so that the scripture might be fulfilled: If anyone boasts, let him make his boast in the Lord.”
First letter of S. Paul to the Corinthians, 1: 26-31 [link]
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