Hello, Church fans! The Beatitudes in Luke, along with their corresponding woes, can sound a little harsh to our ears. What’s Jesus getting at? It has to do with where your heart is. Once you figure that out, blessing is yours for the asking. You can check out the video here. Most of the text is below.
Blessings are good. Curses are bad. Joy is good. Woe is bad. So why does Jesus make such a big deal about who gets cursed as well as who gets blessed? It sounds harsh to our ears, but he’s making a really good point. To start, let’s look to the first reading from the Book of the prophet Jeremiah.
“Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh…” (Jer 17:5), and
“Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD.” (Jer 17:7)
Now take a look at the Lucan Beatitudes and you will see a similar dynamic going on. It all hinges on what and in whom we place our trust. Where is your heart? Quite simply, our happiness in this life and our eternal joy in the next hangs on one decision—do we place our trust in God or in the world? Trust in God brings the blessing of peace. Trust in the things of this world brings the curse of bitterness and resentment.
Thomas Aquinas talks about this at length. As human beings we are born to seek the good. The greatest good, of course, is God. Anything short of that will leave us wanting. As St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you.”
Unfortunately, we humans are easily distracted by the things of this world. Thomas pointed out that the worldly person rather than trusting in God, erroneously seeks fulfillment in power, wealth, pleasure, or honor. None of these are evil in and of themselves, but if we seek them before or in place of God, we will always be frustrated.
Thomas was a smart guy. If you look at the Lucan Beatitudes, each of the blessings and curses correspond exactly to either wealth or poverty, hunger or pleasure, power or mournfulness, honor or denunciation.
The poor by definition do not have wealth. The hungry are deprived of one of life’s basic pleasures. Those who weep seem the most powerless. And those who are hated, excluded and denounced, certainly do not have honor. They cannot look to these things instead of God simply because they do not have them. They are blessed in one sense, because they aren’t distracted.
But by the same token, powerlessness by itself is not virtuous; neither is hunger, weeping or being hated. For example, the poor person’s desire for wealth can lead him away from God; so too the hungry person’s desire for pleasure, (not all hunger is for food).
As I have said before, regardless of your circumstances, you can approach life either with a spirituality of abundance and gratitude, or of scarcity and resentment. If you choose abundance and gratitude, then you will never want for anything. If you choose scarcity and resentment, you will never have enough, no matter how much wealth, pleasure power or honor you may accumulate in this life.
Blessings are good. Curses are bad. Joy is good. Woe is bad. Which you will experience in this life all depends on the deepest desires of your heart. As Jeremiah says, the key to blessedness is to put our trust first in Almighty God, and everything else after that.
I think we know Joy is good. She says Grace before each meal! Tee hee