The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today invite contemplation of the blessings we experience when we abandon selfish pursuits and seek humility and grace to build a community where all people are brothers and sisters.
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| Building community |
In the reading from the First Book of Kings introduces Elijah who predicts a drought in Israel.
* [17:1–24] The story of Elijah is in three parts. The first (chap. 17) describes how Elijah proclaimed a drought on God’s authority and how he survived during the drought. The second (chap. 18) describes how he ends the drought by bringing the populace back to exclusive worship of the Lord. The third (chap. 19) describes Elijah’s despair at the failure of his prophetic mission and his consequent attempt to resign from the prophetic office.1
Psalm 121 offers assurance of God’s protection.
* [Psalm 121] A blessing given to someone embarking on a dangerous journey whether a soldier going on a campaign or a pilgrim returning home from the Temple. People look anxiously at the wooded hills. Will God protect them on their journey (Ps 121:1)? The speaker declares that God is not confined to a place or a time (Ps 121:2), that every step is guarded (Ps 121:3–4); night and day (Ps 121:5–6) God watches over their every movement (Ps 121:7–8).2
Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew by presenting the Beatitudes.
* [5:3–12] The form Blessed are (is) occurs frequently in the Old Testament in the Wisdom literature and in the psalms. Although modified by Matthew, the first, second, fourth, and ninth beatitudes have Lucan parallels (Mt 5:3 // Lk 6:20; Mt 5:4 // Lk 6:21b; Mt 5:6 // Lk 6:21a; Mt 5:11–12 // Lk 5:22–23). The others were added by the evangelist and are probably his own composition. A few manuscripts, Western and Alexandrian, and many versions and patristic quotations give the second and third beatitudes in inverted order.3
Colleen Chiacchere shares how a conversation with her daughter propelled her into a different but related perspective about how the Beatitudes apply to our world in this coronavirus pandemic.
Blessed are those who sacrifice their own comfort and security for others…
Blessed are those on the front lines during this pandemic….
Blessed are those who are sad and missing their loves ones and struggling with isolation…
Blessed are those who are dying alone…
Blessed are those who are working tirelessly for a vaccine…
Blessed are those on the margins, who feel the brunt of the pandemic in deep and acute ways…
Blessed are those who are turning to God for help in balancing the upheaval of their lives…
These experiences of struggle, of hurt, of pain and of vulnerability are ways where we are invited to see God. These are experiences where we are invited to know God’s intimate care and mercy for us. Which invitations are we accepting? Which invitations are we declining?4
Don Schwager asks: Is God enough for you? God offers us the greatest good possible - abundant life in Jesus Christ (John 10:10) and the promise of unending joy and happiness with God forever. Don quotes “Perfect blessedness is humility of spirit,” by Hilary of Poitiers (315-367 AD).
"'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' The Lord taught by way of example that the glory of human ambition must be left behind when he said, 'The Lord your God shall you adore and him only shall you serve' (Matthew 4:10). And when he announced through the prophets that he would choose a people humble and in awe of his words [Isaiah 66:2], he introduced the perfect Beatitude as humility of spirit. Therefore he defines those who are inspired as people aware that they are in possession of the heavenly kingdom... Nothing belongs to anyone as being properly one's own, but all have the same things by the gift of a single parent. They have been given the first things needed to come into life and have been supplied with the means to use them." (excerpt from commentary ON MATTHEW 4.2)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Psalm 121:1-8 notes many Scripture scholars believe that in this particular psalm, the mountains represent danger and a source of anxiety. And that’s striking because the psalmist is declaring that even in the face of the most towering of obstacles, God will always help.
We all have mountains in our lives—seemingly insurmountable obstacles that can obscure our vision of what lies ahead. We wonder how to care for an aging parent or a wayward child, how to find a job or pay the rent, or how to deal with a health crisis.
It’s in times like these that God wants us to focus not on our “mountains” but on him, the One who is creative and powerful and who “will guard your life . . . both now and forever” (Psalm 121:7, 8). As you look for his answer, persist in praying and searching the Scriptures. Be prepared for the possibility that God will help you through an idea that unexpectedly pops into your mind or through the wise counsel of a friend. He may even prompt you to act in a way you never imagined but that turns out to be the best course.6
Friar Jude Winkler provides background to the mission of Elijah in the northern kingdom of Israel in connection with Baal worship and Jezebel, wife of the king. As the crime, so the punishment is a theme in the Hebrew Testament. Friar Jude connects the Beatitudes to our humility, compassion, and brokenness.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, shares that for a long time, he naively hoped that racism was a thing of the past. Those of us who are white have a very hard time seeing that we constantly receive special treatment [because of social systems built to prioritize people with white skin]. This systemic “white privilege” makes it harder for us to recognize the experiences of people of color as valid and real when they speak of racial profiling, police brutality, discrimination in the workplace, continued segregation in schools, lack of access to housing, and on and on. This is not the experience of most white people, so how can it be true? Now, we are being shown how limited our vision is.
Of course, we all belong. There is no issue of more or less in the eyes of an Infinite God. Yet the ego believes the lie that there isn’t enough to go around and that for me to succeed or win, someone else must lose. And so we’ve greedily supported systems and governments that work to our own advantage at the expense of others, most often people of color or any highly visible difference. The advancement of the white person was too often at the cost of other people not advancing at all. A minor history course should make that rather clear...
Power [and privilege] never surrenders without a fight. If your entire life has been to live unquestioned in your position of power—a power that was culturally given to you, but you think you earned—there is almost no way you will give it up without major failure, suffering, humiliation, or defeat. As long as we really want to be on top and would take advantage of any privilege or short cut to get us there, we will never experience true “liberty, equality, fraternity” (revolutionary ideals that endure as mottos for France and Haiti).7
Fr Richard reminds us that like Jesus, St Francis, St Clare, and many other humble mystics, we then rush down instead of up. In the act of letting go and choosing to become servants, community can at last be possible. The illusory state of privilege just gets in the way of neighboring and basic human friendship. In humility, we have the opportunity to experience the blessings of the Beatitudes is our poverty, compassion, brokenness, and concentration on the image of God in all people and nature.
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