“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all encouragement, who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God.”
Christ’s sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow. Powerful words
In the Gospel we heard the Beatitudes:
Blessed are you who are poor in spirit…
Blessed are you who are now mourn…
Blessed are you who are now meek…
Blessed are you who are now peacemakers…..
Blessed are you who are now persecuted for the sake of Christ….
Blessed are you when people hate you…
Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! (Matthew 5:1-12 )
One may ask oneself, how should I be blessed when I am poor and hungry?
Jesus’s sayings in the Gospel of Matthew is called the “The Sermon on the Mount (Mtt 5-7). The evangelist Luke has similar sayings called the “The Sermon on the Plains” (Luke 6: 20-49). While Luke’s account has four positive Beatitudes (Blessed are those….) that are balanced with matching negatives (Woe to those….) Matthew’s account has list of nine Beatitudes which has no balancing negatives.
In his book “Jesus through the Middle Eastern Eyes” Kenneth Bailey noted that the word used for “blessed” is “Makarios” and it affirms something that already exists. So, saying “blessed are the poor in spirit….” is rather affirming a quality in a person that already exists in that person. It is different from the saying “If you are meek you will inherit the earth”. The Beatitude does not mean “Blessed are the people who do X because they will receive Y.” The Beatitudes affirms a happy state that already exists. We could say, “Blessed is the happy son of Mr. Kennedy because he will inherit the Kennedy’s investment. The son in question is already a happy son of Mr. Kennedy. He is not working to earn the investment. Everyone knows that a key element in his happy and secure life is that he and the community around him know that the investment will one day be his.
Let’s look at the word “poor” in the first Beatitude – “Blessed are the poor in spirit…..” Who is the “poor” and what does the word “poor” meant here? In Isaiah (66:2) “the poor” are the humble and pious who seek God. The word poor in Isaiah does not refer to people who do not have enough to eat (Is 58:7). In many cases the word poor refers to the humble and pious who know that they need God’s grace and tremble at his word.” So, in the Beatitudes, Jesus proclaimed that the poor in spirit already posses the kingdom. So, the kingdom was already present in the poor in spirit and not the Zealots.
Many people at the time of Jesus, use the phrase “the kingdom of God” to describe the Jewish state where God alone was King. This is contrary to Jesus’s teaching and views on the Kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is both “now”, and “not yet” (Lk 11:20). The kingdom of God is near, yet far off (Lk 19:11). The kingdom of God is to us unknown and unknowable (Mtt 24: 36; Mk 13: 32). The kingdom of God is the day of the Lord.
May we strive to fit in the Beatitudes, so that the blessings that accompany them may be ours.
Have a wonderful week
