Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 4 / Sunday
Readings: Zephaniah 2.3, 3.12-13 / Psalm 145.6c-7, 8-9a, 9bc-10 (R/v Mt 5.3) / 1 Corinthians 1.26-31 / Matthew 5.1-12a
We gather around this altar, as we do every Sunday. Today our gathering is a little different: there’s a festive air.
More red dresses and shirts dot the pews. Many of us are buoyant in spirit because of the good conversation, hearty laughter and happy catch-ups we’ve had at reunion dinners and from visits to the elders and friends. The young and single however remain expectant for the ang pows in many a handbag this morning. I believe we’ve all come with greater awareness for the goodness of abundance in our lives—so much indeed for us to celebrate in thanksgiving.
Today’s gospel passage offers us an added reason to celebrate. It is however easy to miss it because of our familiarity with Matthew’s presentation of Jesus teaching the Beatitudes. We are familiar with the details: the location, the disciples and crowds, Jesus teaching. We are familiar with the purpose of Jesus’ teachings: to describe conditions for a new way of living and promised blessings to all who live this way. Conditions and blessings such as:
Blessed are the poor in spirit,for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek,for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,for they will be satisfied.
And, blessed are the merciful,for they will be shown mercy.
We are familiar with Jesus’ Beatitudes because of the countless homilies we have heard about it, the many reflections we have read about it, and the spiritual experiences we had about it in prayer. Our familiarity with the Beatitudes is good, but it can blind us to a reason for us to live more gratefully as Christians.
What exactly is this reason? How will we find it as we read the Beatitudes?
We will find this reason in our attitude—that is, the disposition of our hearts—to welcome Jesus and the Beatitudes he teaches. We’ll know it when we recognize and accept it. What this attitude is is our poverty to receive, to welcome, to accept and to celebrate Jesus.
The Jesuit Dan Harrington taught me Scripture in Boston College. Whenever I remember his Ascension Day homily, I think of this question I asked when I heard it: “Where is Jesus today?” Dan’s brief but succinct homily centered on these phrases: “Jesus came; Jesus cared; Jesus died; Jesus rose from dead; Jesus saved; Jesus went up to heaven; no more Jesus.” They challenged all of us gathered at Mass that day to acknowledge that the risen Jesus remains with us and amongst us even though he has ascended. Yes, Jesus lives with us still—he is especially to be found with the downtrodden and needy, for he is small like them. His Spirit is real and alive amongst them.
The very first Beatitude Jesus teaches is about God’s blessing on human poverty. It is a blessing for all who are oppressed and in need.
The Greek word for ‘poor’ in this passage on the Beatitudes literally means “beggar”. Beggars are the truly poor: they are in need for they have nothing at all, including no access or right to choice. Beggars depend on the mercy and generosity of others.
We are really not so different from beggars. Yes, we have our material wealth. Yes, we have intellect and skills. Yes, we have enough abundance to celebrate Chinese New Year, and some of us even have the boldness to want more. But if we dare to look at ourselves honestly, we might discover that we are indeed poor, poor like the beggars. Poor in our hunger for forgiveness. Poor in our woundedness for healing. Poor in our loneliness for love. Poor in our thirst for life. Poor because we depend. We depend on another family member or friend or stranger, or even an enemy, for forgiveness, for reconciliation, for healing, for love, for life.
But more than another person, we ultimately depend on God: depend on God for our physical and our spiritual needs. We know we are beggars because we desperately long for God. And God gives us Jesus to meet our deepest human need for mercy, again and again.
Yet our poverty for God and for God’s mercy is ironically all that we need to give back to God. Such poverty is our wealth. It is all that God asks us to first offer to Him as we gather around his altar today. Not our abundance, not even our liberty, our memory, our understanding, our entire will, all that we have and we call our own. Before all else, God asks us, “Give me your poverty”.
This is why I think Jesus shows us the way to God through the Beatitudes. These conditions to live in God’s ways and the blessings to receive God’s promises are founded on this first Beatitude Jesus teaches: “Blessed are the poor in spirit”.
To live a life poor in spirit, a life of radical dependency on God, from moment to moment, is what Jesus teaches as the foundation of Christian life.
We are not the economically poor and destitute. But we are like them because we have no choice about many things and the myriad circumstances in our lives. Like beggars who are the poor in spirit, we come to God and beg for mercy, blessings and life.
We can’t beg God, we can’t depend on God, however, unless we first recognize our poverty of spirit. But we need to do more than recognize it; we need to understand our poverty. Understand it from God’s point of view—that our poverty of spirit is, in fact, a blessed “emptiness to be filled to overflowing with Jesus’ peace and most affectionate compassion”*
Today’s good and happy news is that God treasures our poverty. Jesus teaches this truth in the Beatitudes. Wise are we who will make this truth the bedrock of how we live and love, how we play and pray, how we act and interact with others.
We are and we will always be poor in spirit. God recognizes this reality of human life. And God loves it even more in us because being poor in spirit humbles us before God. Only in humility can God’s mercy transform us. Blessed are we who recognise God’s mercy laboring for us in our poverty. Then, we will know how to celebrate it well: by doing onto others in poverty what God does for us who are poor in spirit.
In a few minutes we will come to Communion. We will receive Jesus who gives himself to us that we might have life to the full, and so enjoy happiness, freedom and peace. We will take and eat. We will be nourished by God through Jesus, our daily bread. Then, we will depart to continue our Chinese New Year celebrations for a few more days, and thereafter return to school and work and daily life. Our families, our schools, our work places, even our recreation and prayers spaces, that we will return to will be the same: still incomplete and broken, still soiled and stained. Yes, there’s a need to improve them.
Yet it is in how we live our poverty of spirit, individually and together, in these very spaces that we can discover, again and again, that we are never poor but rich—rich because God comes to us in our imperfect ways as we live in this imperfect world to always give us abundant life.
So let’s see today's celebrations in a different perspective as are now gathered around the altar. Isn’t our poverty of spirit then a very good reason for us to celebrate even more this Chinese New Year—even more than the abundance of goodness that we have and possess, because this poverty is in fact God’s gift for us to enjoy the fullness of life in Jesus?
*Inspired by monks from the Trappist Monastery, Spencer, Massachusetts
Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
photo: www.borgenmagazine.com
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