Blessed are you who are poor,
for the kingdom of God is yours.
It is hard for those who are rich to enter the kingdom of God, though for God it is possible, since to him all things are possible. Beyond a certain point of sufficiency the accumulation of wealth becomes a distraction pursued for its own sake, demanding attention that might otherwise have gone into learning to become disciples of Jesus. It is the motive that led the rich fool in the parable to build silos of increasing size to store grain above and beyond what he would need (see Luke 12:1-21). It was also this motivation that led the people in the parable of the wedding banquet to ignore the invitation and go off, "one to his field, another to his business" (see Matthew 22:5).
The disciples, by contrast, where those who had given up everything to follow Jesus (see Matthew 19:27). They were often hungry, needing to pick grains on the Sabbath from the fields through which they traveled (see Matthew 12:1). By preferring the mission over the desires of the body they learned about the hidden bread about which Jesus had taught them: doing the will of his Father (John 4:32-34). They gradually came to understand that those who sought first the kingdom gained all else besides (see Matthew 6:33). God indeed filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty (see Luke 1:53). Had they preferred to try to ensure they had full bellies by pursuing earthly things they would have missed, not only the multiplication of the loaves, but even the Eucharistic feast. Not only that, they would have risked becoming like the rich man that neglected poor Lazarus on his doorstep (see Luke 16:19-31). For a time they would suffer and it would seem that the world had triumphed. But eventually, in light of the resurrection, they would laugh, overcome with joy.
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,
we are the most pitiable people of all.
The beatitudes help us to look attentively to that which is truly important in the world, Jesus, his mission, and his presence in the poor and needy. But they remind us that to serve this world best we must be able to look beyond this world to the resurrection. Only in the resurrection will the great reversal described in the beatitudes be made complete. Only then will we be fully satisfied, laugh with no admixture of sorrow, and rejoice and leap for joy in the Lord, living in his kingdom with undivided hearts.
He is like a tree planted beside the waters
that stretches out its roots to the stream:
it fears not the heat when it comes;
its leaves stay green;
The reading from Jeremiah reminds us that the beatitudes are not merely a future tense promise. Faith brings them into the here and now, giving us in, some measure, the satisfaction and the joy that will be fulfilled entirely with his Kingdom. In short the beatitudes are like extended meditations on the power of the resurrection, when the worst thing in the world gave way to the best, when death itself gave way to life forever.
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