Sixth Sunday In Ordinary Time

~ This weekend, we hear in Luke’s Gospel “blessed are the poor.”  In Matthew’s Gospel, we hear it a bit differently.  It is “blessed are the poor of spirit.”  We think that Luke’s account is closer to what Jesus said in his great sermon on the beatitudes – and Jesus meant the poor.  He was talking about people he knew – people like him who lived day-to-day – struggling to keep body together with the support of one another.  But most importantly they shared hope – hope in the Lord.  It is this hope in the Lord that marks their blessedness.

In Matthew’s Gospel he speaks of “the poor in spirit.”  Is there a difference?  Only in this – if we’re not poor in the economic sense, we can hope to be poor in the spirit.  Maybe the economically poor simply have an easier time of it in one way, but we should/could all work towards that state of being poor in spirit.  It includes all who would learn who come like children to the book of life – those who are content with simplicity – who cringe at the commercialization of our culture.  It includes then those unspoiled children of God.

I have witnessed the people of Haiti share in the joy of time with one another – talking – playing cards – playing soccer with a ragged ball in a field of rocks.  Their joy is from the simplicity of life.  They’ve no needs of smartphones or iPads, unless our culture tries to convince them otherwise.  It is from this poverty that they learn to place all their hope and trust in the Lord.  They’ve come to expect little from man (that’s the meaning of the passage we hear in Jeremiah: “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings.”) There trust is in the Lord – there is their joy.  

Jesus never condemned wealth, but he saw how wealth might turn us into thinking that we are self-sufficient – that in our wealth we need no one else.  Jesus laid his emphasis on those qualities among the poor which can make their life our model: simplicity of heart, the capacity to find happiness in oneself and in the love of people rather than in things.

The better off may already have received their consolation, may be full now, may laugh now, may be satisfied, because all may speak well of them – they may think themselves no longer eager for the gift of God, thinking they already have everything worth desiring; they have no hunger for the invisible, because their visible possessions seem to be enough.

Our hope and our blessings come from the Lord.  Often things can become our gods and lead us to hope in them, rather than in the Lord.  We can easily place too much emphasis on the things of the earth rather than on the things of heaven, and so our focus on God can become blurred.  

More devastating are the words in the Book of Revelation, words that represent the eternal warning of Christ to those whom the satisfactions of this world may have lulled into a sort of complacency:  

For you say, ‘I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,’ and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

When we look at all that we have and then take a look at where most people’s priorities lie, we can be tempted to lose hope.  If we recognize there is more – more beyond the material, then our hope soars and we look to the Lord for all that we could ever want or need.