Paul and Beatitudes

The journey as followers of Jesus will involve affliction and consolation. This message comes through the texts today in the Roman CatholicLectionary. Scholars have proposed, as Friar Jude Winkler notes, that the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians is an amalgamation three separate letters. They identify parts of the letter which point to the 1^st letter and contain a 3^rd and 4^th letter. The passage today is a reminder that we all will experience affliction and suffering as we move to live as disciples of Jesus. Paul may be referring to the particular affliction and suffering which he experienced as a consequence of an angry previous letter to Corinth calling them to adhere to the message of Jesus. The consolation received by Paul through his relationship to God prompts the seeking of forgiveness and reconciliation with the people in Corinth. The Gospel from Matthew is another reconsideration of life through the presentation of the Sermon on the Mount through the eyes of a converted Pharisee who scholars believe assisted in the completion of this episode which Matthew the Jewish author of this Gospel wrote to a Jewish audience. Friar Jude comments that Jesus, like Moses, opens His teaching of the nature of God from a mountain. The scrupulous adherence to many laws of the Pharisee is replaced by eight proclamations of those who are blessed by God in lives which attend to spiritual values of humility, mourning, meekness, thirst for righteous compassion, mercy, peace of “Shalom”. These blessed of God will know the affliction which attacks the followers of Truth through ridicule and persecution and they will live the consolation of Paul which will prompt seeking to restore relationships and pursue forgiveness from others.