Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD,
whose hope is the LORD.
Rather than seeking our strength in flesh, in our ego, in those things the control and manipulation of which make us prideful, rather, indeed, than anything else, we are called to make the Lord the one whom we trust above all others. He is to be the one on whom we truly rely, rather than ourselves, as the source of our strength.
It is altogether natural from a human point of view to emphasize those things that we can control and to try to control them as if we ourselves were required to act the part of God in our lives. It is difficult for us to happily accept any privation of the things that make the flesh strong, even if it the privation is only temporary and for the sake of the Kingdom.
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for the kingdom of God is yours.
Jesus demonstrated in the beatitudes that his disciples would need to be willing to put God in the first place in their lives. They would had done this or would do it by choosing him rather the riches, sometimes even leaving all they had to follow him. Disciples of Jesus could only be those who were not so chained to their wealth that they, when invited to follow, went away sad, as did the rich young ruler (see Mark 10:17-27). But the call of the beatitudes was not only for the disciples, nor is it only a call now for monks and priests. We too must prefer God to our wealth, to be willing to use what we have for the sake of the Kingdom, and to not be so preoccupied with it as to seek it in ways that are actually opposed to human flourishing, and therefore opposed to the Kingdom.
Blessed are you who are now hungry,
for you will be satisfied.
The crowd that Jesus fed by multiplying loaves and fishes was willing to be hungry for the sake of hearing his teaching, even for three days. Some of us would do well to make it through a single mass without thinking about what is for dinner. We are called to note this impulse, and guard against the desire that would prefer temporary pleasures to the lasting peace that only Jesus can give.
Blessed are you who are now weeping,
for you will laugh.
We may well wish to create lives that are so Pollyanna-esque that we refuse to see the problems that need fixing, the things which Jesus might perhaps want to use us to address. This is so common as to be a stereotype, the Ned Flanders interpretation of Christianity. Put another way, we can't allow ourselves to focus on playing the violin while Rome is burning. It is true that there is plenty of joy and laughter to be had even here in this present life, and we are not necessarily called to shun those experiences. However, we need to heed the warning against demanding of God only experiences replete with comfortable and enjoyable feelings. If we do this we will miss the crosses we have been called to bear for the sake of the world. We need to be willing to enter into the death of Jesus in the ways he calls us if we are to fully experience the joy of the resurrection. If he allows us to weep for a moment we are meant to trust that his joy comes with the morning (see Psalm 30:5).
Blessed are you when people hate you,
and when they exclude and insult you,
and denounce your name as evil
on account of the Son of Man
Do we prefer our reputation to Jesus and his message of salvation? Our call, like that is the disciples, is a prophetic one. We cannot be so interested in what people think that we are only willing to say things that will keep them happy in the way that they themselves define happiness. This is beatitude is an other-centric version of the earlier one where we were told that we ourselves must be willing to weep. Until the Kingdom comes in fullness we all need to be opening to a challenging word, a word of rebuke, which might even sting for a time, but eventually yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness (see Hebrews 12:11).
Christ has vindicated the promise of the beatitudes by rising from the dead. His resurrection is a promise to those who follow him that poverty, hunger, sorrow, and persecution do not have the last word. They seemed to dominate during the dark hour of the Passion and so too do they often seem to dominate now. But Jesus defeated them, and death itself, by rising from the dead. It is not just as a sign of the truth of his message that Jesus rose. It is rather in his very resurrection that we have the promise of ourselves rising to new life, the life promised by the beatitudes.
But now Christ has been raised from the dead,
the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
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