Poor and Happy
Today’s message of the beatitudes is perhaps the most upsetting and challenging page of the Good News of Jesus Christ; it is right at the heart of the Gospel. The rich, the proud and the mighty are self-satisfied: they have what they want. They are dangerously shut in within themselves and with what they have. The poor and the suffering are not praised because they have nothing or are persecuted, but because the poor and the humble, the gentle and those who weep are aware that they have nothing but themselves to give, and so they are people who hope, expecting everything from God and from people. Let us be among these happy ones.
Zeph 2:3; 3:12-13
Seek God, all you quietly disciplined people
who live by God’s justice.
Seek God’s right ways. Seek a quiet and disciplined life.
Perhaps you’ll be hidden on the Day of God’s anger.
“In the end I will turn things around for the people.
I’ll give them a language undistorted, unpolluted,
Words to address God in worship
and, united, to serve me with their shoulders to the wheel.
They’ll come from beyond the Ethiopian rivers,
they’ll come praying—
All my scattered, exiled people
will come home with offerings for worship.
You’ll no longer have to be ashamed
of all those acts of rebellion.
I’ll have gotten rid of your arrogant leaders.
No more pious strutting on my holy hill!
I’ll leave a core of people among you
who are poor in spirit—
What’s left of Israel that’s really Israel.
They’ll make their home in God.
This core holy people
will not do wrong.
They won’t lie,
won’t use words to flatter or seduce.
Content with who they are and where they are,
unanxious, they’ll live at peace.”
1 Cor 1:26-31
Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”
Mt 5:1-12
When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. This is what he said:
“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
“You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
“You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.
“You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.
“You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
“You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.
“You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.
“Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.
Prayer
Lord God, loving Father,
we ask you today for the kind of happiness
which you offer us through your Son Jesus.
Make us aware of the poverty of our hearts,
that we may have nothing else to give
than our own selves,
and that you can fill us with yourself
and with love and concern for people.
Give us your kind of justice
that does not judge or condemn.
Help us to forgive notwithstanding injuries,
and to love without asking for gratitude.
Let the spirit of Jesus be alive in us
now and for ever.
Reflection:
29 January 2023
Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13
Congratulations! You win!
Do you want to be happy for a few hours? Get drunk. Do you want to be satisfied for some years? Grab the pleasures that life gives you. But how to be happy always? The Bible guarantees a paradox: true and lasting joy is born of commitment, renunciation, self-denial, sacrifice, and accompanied by pain. “Now I am glad to suffer for you,” says Paul to the Colossians 1:24.
There was a time when God seemed to have allied himself with the rich: welfare, fortune, an abundance of goods, numerous offspring were seen as signs of God’s blessing (Deut 28:1-14).
Zephaniah lived a few years before the destruction of Jerusalem, in a period of social and political chaos. Although belonged to ruling class, the prophet went against the dignitaries of the court, against the merchants, against the ungodly (cf. Zep 1:8-12), and against all those who perpetrate injustice. He threatens the imminent punishment of God and, as the last possibility of salvation, invites them to ‘conversion to the Lord.’
To convert means becoming like the humble, like the poor. For Zephaniah, the poor are those who having no security, trust entirely in God and submit to his will.
Most of the book of the prophet Zephaniah is about a terrible day of vengeance which the Lord will wreak upon idolaters and the unfaithful. But today’s passage describes a “remnant,” a humble and just minority who will receive not vengeance but security.
This remnant, a “moral minority” is addressed by both Jesus and Zephaniah. They speak as if they know their message will be lost on the powerful, the self-important people intent on dominating others. They want their listeners not to choose the path of arrogance, not even to pine for power, but “seek justice … seek humility, … do no wrong, … speak no lies” (Zephaniah), and to “thirst for righteousness, … be merciful, and be peacemakers” (Jesus).
We are praying with the dignity of being a “remnant” people. Jesus, in today’s Gospel is speaking to His disciples whom He wishes to form into a remnant. Matthew pictures Jesus up on a mountain-side presenting a variation of the Ten Commandments.
Just as the Ten Commandments are the core of the Jewish way of life and a law to follow, so Beatitudes are the core of the Christian way of life. Jesus is the new Moses, presenting the new commandments and tells his followers, “Congratulations! You won the favour of the Lord…because you are poor and docile, you are a peace maker, accepted persecutions and pains for the Kingdom …