Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
At the height of the Soviet Union, a visitor there noticed that the only people in church were little old ladies, and he concluded that the church would eventually die out there and Christianity would cease to exist as a presence. However, that hasn’t happened. It is often those who are considered by many to be foolish, weak and contemptible, in the language of today’s first reading, who keep the flame of faith burning, sometimes in the most hostile of environments. Those far from the seat of power and influence are often the ones chosen by the Lord to bear quiet witness to him in difficult times. The first reading speaks of ‘those who are left’, a small number, a ‘humble and lowly people’, who ‘will seek refuge in the name of the Lord’. It only takes a handful of faithful people, no matter how weak and unpromising they may seem to others, to create an opening for the coming of God’s kingdom into our world. In the language of one of Jesus’ parables, a little yeast can help to form a very large amount of dough to make bread to feed a multitude.
Saint Paul came to recognize that the Lord’s power is often made perfect in weakness. The Lord often works most powerfully through those whom the world considers weak and insignificant. The Lord’s way of working can be very different to the way we tend to work. As the Lord says, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways’. That could certainly be said of the beatitudes in today’s gospel reading. Here we have the thoughts and the ways of Jesus. In many respects, they are at odds with the thoughts and ways of the world in which we live.
In the beatitudes we find what Saint Paul calls ‘the mind of Christ’. The Lord is putting before us the values, attitudes and behaviours that are central to his own life. He is giving us a kind of self-portrait. He is the one who lives the beatitudes to the full. He was poor in spirit in that he trusted fully in God. He gave himself over to God because he knew that only God could keep him faithful to his mission. His final prayer from the cross, in Luke’s gospel, gave expression to this trusting attitude, ‘Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit’. He was gentle. He once spoke of himself as gentle and humble in heart. His gentleness was a sign of a deep inner strength which was the fruit of his trusting relationship with God. He knew that God was at work in the lives of everyone and, so, he didn’t need to impose himself on others or try to control them. He mourned in that he was deeply touched by the suffering of others, and was greatly saddened when people took a path that was not in keeping with their dignity as God’s beloved sons and daughters.
The other side of that sadness was his great hunger and thirst for what is right, for that fullness of life that God wants for all of humanity. He was passionately committed to the present and ultimate well-being of all. This showed itself in the ways that he was merciful. When the broken in body, mind and spirit approached him, they often cried out, ‘Have mercy on us’, and he always responded to their cry. He brought God’s forgiveness to those who thought of themselves as sinners. He worked to bring the kingdom of God, to earth by revealing God’s merciful and compassionate love for all. In the doing of this work, he showed himself to be pure in heart. His heart was always given over to what God wanted for our world. There was nothing self-serving about his giving; his focus was always on God and on those God loved. His work entailed bringing God’s peace to others, the gift of ‘shalom’ in the language of Jesus. This entailed gathering people into a new, reconciled, community where everyone was treated with equal dignity and all were recognized as sons and daughters of God. He was prepared to be persecuted in the pursuit of this great work of God. Indeed, he was crucified because of his faithfulness to the work, the mission, that God gave him.
If Jesus is giving us an insight into his own mind and heart in the beatitudes, he is also calling on us to insert ourselves into the beatitudes, to take on his mind, his values and attitudes. As Saint Paul says to the church of Philippi, ‘Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus’. In the beatitudes, Jesus is portraying a way of life that will open us up to God’s blessing, both in the here and now and beyond this earthly life. Jesus is not describing different kinds of people in the beatitudes but one whole way of life seen from different perspectives. We will be prompted to live in this way if we allow ourselves to be grasped by God’s love that is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the risen Lord. Living the beatitudes is never an purely individual pursuit. It is a journey we travel together, supported by the Spirit at work in each other’s lives.