SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – YEAR C
Commentary of Fr. Fernando Armellini
A good Sunday to all.
We often hear the exclamation 'How lucky you are' referring to people for whom here in life everything is going well; they are happy, fortunate. We did not invent this expression; it was commonly used and applied by the ancient Greeks, first, to their gods who lived happily on Olympus without working, and then, with this expression, they designated the rich, those who resembled the gods more than the others because they also did not work.
This exclamation was also used in addressing anyone happy in life. Thus, 'happy are the parents who have good children.' In Homer, we find this expression: 'Happy the husband of a good wife.' And also for the unmarried: 'Happy is he who has not married'... probably invented by someone who was not very happy in his married life. Among the Greeks, this beatitude was also applied to those who cultivated high moral values: 'Happy is he who achieves fame and honors; those who practice virtue. Blessed are those who cultivate wisdom.'
And not only the Greeks but also the Egyptians used this literary form, especially in the last centuries before Christ. In the literature of the Egyptian texts, we find beatitudes that later appear in the Bible. For example, 'Happy the one who is without sin' recurs verbatim in the Psalms. Or 'Blessed are those who walk in the way of life; blessed those who practice the precepts of God.' These are beatitudes that we find in the Old Testament. The Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Jews used this exclamation.
In the Old Testament, we find 44 beatitudes, especially in the Psalms. Thus, for example, "Blessed is the one who does not follow the way of the wicked" (Ps 1:1). When this exclamation 'happy' appears in the Bible, it is not only praise for the one who is behaving well, but also, above all, a way of indicating how to reach the goal that each person sets in their own life. What does the person desire? Does he know what he aspires to, if not joy, happiness? So, with the expression 'happy' or 'blessed,' they indicated the way not to make mistakes to reach satisfaction.
When the psalmist proclaims: 'Happy is the one who cares for the poor and the weak,' he was indicating to care for the needy. Or 'happy are those who walk in the law of the Lord; blessed are those who act justly'... it was a way of teaching the values on which to focus, genuinely realize one's life, and attain joy. But in life, there is not only joy but also the opposite can happen, i.e., to choose a path to reach joy and meet with pain for having taken the wrong way.
The Greek philosophers had already warned of a misunderstanding, confusing joy with pleasure. Epicurus was wrongly accused of causing this confusion, which is not true; he was unequivocal that pleasure is good if it leads to joy and harmony with oneself through the practice of virtue. Here, then, there is the need to warn against misleading choices and mistakes, and as God loves humanity, his word indicates the way of life that leads to happiness, to the full realization of oneself, and warns against wrong ways.
That is why the Bible resorts to another exclamation: "Woe" (Πλὴν οὐαὶ = plen uay. 'Oi' in Hebrew). It appears 75 times in the Old Testament, but beware, this "woe" does not have the meaning we often attribute to it. It is not a threat of punishment; it is not God saying: ‘I will make you pay for this.’ It is a cry of pain from a father, who is God, who sees that his son is going astray and will never be happy, because he has chosen the wrong path.
As this was the way of speaking of all the Ancient Middle East, it is not surprising that in the New Testament, 45 beatitudes are repeated, such as the two wonderful ones addressed to Mary. Elizabeth, which says, 'Blessed is she who believed.' Then there is another lovely one about the enchanted woman before Jesus, who hears him proclaiming the Gospel and exclaims, 'Blessed is the womb that bore you.' There is some jealousy in this woman thinking of Mary, who had a son like Jesus. We also remember: 'Blessed are the servants whom the master will find still awake on his return. He will sit them down and serve them'; the other beatitude for those who, though they have not seen, would believe.
In the New Testament, we also find the opposite of the beatitude, the 'Woe' 'οὐαὶ = uay, in Greek, it occurs 46 times. 'Woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you, Bethsaida.' It does not mean that Jesus threatens these cities and that they will all end up in hell. No. 'Woe' is Jesus' cry of pain when he sees these cities that he loves, where he preached the Gospel, that they reject him. They have chosen death. That is Jesus' cry of pain. 'Woe to you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites... Woe to him who gives scandal.'
The best known of the beatitudes that we find in the Gospels are the ones presented by Matthew, and there are eight of them, while Luke presents four, the ones we are going to reflect on today, and Luke also adds four 'woes.' To understand their meaning, we must first pay attention to whom Jesus addresses these beatitudes and these 'woes.' Let us listen:
“Jesus came down with them and stood on a stretch of level ground. A great crowd of his disciples and many people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon came to hear him and be healed of their diseases. And raising his eyes toward his disciples, he said: ‘Blessed are you.’”
When we hear about the beatitudes, we immediately think of the beatitudes in Matthew, with which the Sermon on the Mount begins. We may be surprised when we hear what Luke tells us that the beatitudes pronounced by Jesus wero not on the mountain, but in a plain place. The two settings of Matthew and Luke are only an artificial literary framework. We know very well that 'the mountain is not a physical place, but it is the biblical mountain, and Matthew speaks of it. That is the moment, the place, the context in which a person assimilates the thought of God, the way of judging and valuing things that is so far away from man's way of judging.
How is it that Luke does not place the beatitudes on the mountain but on a level place? The literary place is artificial for both evangelists. Besides, the beatitudes were not pronounced by Jesus one after the other; two communities collected them. Those of Matthew were compiled by the community of Antioch of Syria, and those of Luke, probably by the community of Philippi. What did these communities want to do? They tried to synthesize the proposal of man made by Jesus; the proposal of a complete, blessed person is very different from that of the people of the plain. These propose other beatitudes to you.
Why does Luke place this artificial frame in a flat place? Why this artificial ledge? He wants to show that this proposal of man is addressed to people all over the world, of all nations, and those who are around Jesus are a great multitude coming from Jerusalem, from Judea, but also from pagan territories, so that the beatitudes that Jesus proposes are addressed to all. However, there is a group of disciples whom Jesus addresses directly.
The multitude will hear these beatitudes uttered to that group that first receives them. Who forms this group? We discovered it last Sunday; they are those disciples who were in the boat and to whom Jesus has entrusted the task of bringing people out of the waters of death and into life, and the deeper they are in the waters, the more they must do to save them, to bring them out. What did these disciples do? We remember that they pulled the boats ashore, left everything, and accepted Jesus' proposal to follow him. Let us observe that they left everything, and it is to them that Jesus is now addressing the beatitude, 'Blessed are you who have made the right choice.'
Let us now hear why these disciples, who left everything and have followed him, are proclaimed blessed. These blessed ones have four characteristics. Let us listen:
“Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil because of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way.”
"Blessed are you," says Jesus, not to the multitudes but to the small group of his disciples. He did not pronounce this beatitude in front of beggars, in front of the miserable; poverty is not a good thing; God does not want his children to live in misery; He wants them to be well. He wants them to be happy. What poverty is Jesus talking about? Of the poverty that his disciples chose, because by making themselves poor, they entered the kingdom of God.
In the programmatic discourse at Nazareth, Jesus said, ‘I have come to bring glad tidings to the poor.' What was this glad tiding? It was not that they would remain poor, in misery, no. He has come to announce that this condition would disappear from the world when everyone would have what they needed and when people would welcome the new world proposed by Jesus, the kingdom of God. And this kingdom of God is entered by becoming poor, which is his disciples' choice. We just heard they decided to abandon everything, to be left with nothing. What they did was a choice; it was not the consequence of a misfortune.
He is not blessed and becomes poor because an earthquake destroys his house. No. The first condition to enter the kingdom of God is to become poor by choice. A little later, in chapter 5, Luke narrates another call, Levi's. Jesus said to him, 'Follow me,' and he arose, leaving everything. To follow Jesus and become his disciples, one must go through everything. In Luke's Gospel, this 'leaving everything' is like a refrain at the end of every call. In the case of the rich young man who comes to Jesus, because he has an inner restlessness, he has everything, but he is not happy, Jesus makes the diagnosis: 'You are attached to riches, sell all that you have, distribute it to the poor.' He gave him the medicine for healing, but this young man did not accept it.
To be a disciple, to belong to the new world, one must renounce everything. This voluntary poverty is not optional or reserved for the religious and the nuns... No. Whoever wants to be a Christian, whoever wants to enter the kingdom of God in the new world, must make this choice, and then he will be blessed. Jesus is addressing everyone; Jesus says, 'Whoever among you does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.’ We must remember this truth; otherwise, we deceive ourselves by thinking that we are disciples and belong to the kingdom of God, but if we are attached to possessions, we are not inside.
How can we deprive ourselves of possessions? Do we throw them out of the window? No, that would be ridiculous; it would be a foolish interpretation of Jesus' words. The goods of this world are precious; they are a gift from the Creator, but they must be administered according to the plan of the Creator to whom they belong. Jesus warned of the danger of attaching one's heart to these goods and then one does not enter the kingdom of God. To enter the new world, you must come out of the lie and accept the truth. What is the lie? It's what we keep repeating: My abilities, my intelligence, my capacity that has allowed me to accumulate many possessions, to have houses and fields, and now all these possessions are mine. This is the lie from which all our 'woes' arise. To consider one's possessions as one's own is a lie because nothing is ours.
All possessive adjectives are a lie. Everything is God's. We are stewards of assets that are not ours, and we must manage them according to the owner's plan. Why has the Lord given us these goods? They have recipients, those who need them. We are not self-sufficient. We don't have all the goods we need. We must ask the brethren for them. God made us well; we are obliged to exchange these gifts. The lie where all the 'woes' come from is when we consider them as ours, and then we start to trade them, to offer them to the highest bidder. The higher the bid, the more the need increases, and the more we can increase the price and, thus, become more affluent and more prosperous, adding house to house, field to field, as the prophet Isaiah denounces.
So, to enter the new world that Jesus proposes to us, which is according to God's plan, that world from which poverty disappears, from which wars disappear, violence disappears, we must manage goods becoming poor, that is to say, leaving us with nothing because we have understood who the recipients are; we are left with nothing because we are left with nothing for ourselves, for our selfishness, but we give it to the needy, and we also receive from our brethren the gifts that God has given them so that they may give them to us when we require them.
In the evangelical sense, the poor is the one who has nothing for himself, the one who renounces the worship of money, the selfish use of his time, his intellectual capacities, his erudition, his diplomas, and his social position. The ideal of the Christian is not poverty and deprivation but a world where all are evangelically poor. A world in which no one accumulates for himself, no one squanders, where he makes what he has received from God available to his brothers and sisters. "Blessed are the poor" is not a message of resignation but of hope in a world in which no one shall have needs, for God has made the world good, and all the requirements of humankind may be satisfied when goods are administered according to the Creator's plan.
The promise accompanying this beatitude is not postponed to the future. Still, it is to enter—not into paradise after this life—but to enter into the kingdom of God when one is poor, but if one is in and one begins to cling to possessions and cling to them tightly, then he is out of the new world. What consequences will the choice of evangelical poverty have? What should the disciples expect when they renounce the selfish use of riches? To this question, Jesus answers with three other beatitudes concerning the disciples who leave everything to keep nothing for themselves. Sacrifices will come; the Christian seeks neither sacrifice nor suffering. God does not like suffering. God does not want pain, and we should not offer it because He does not know what to do with it, but confident choices involve painful renunciations. They are found in the other three beatitudes.
First, you will be hungry: "Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied.” But you must bear in mind that you will suffer hunger. Poverty does not exist in the kingdom of God, but there is still a hunger that can create some discomforts, which is the misery people make when they mismanage goods. But there is also another hunger: if you have a colleague who administers the goods according to the criteria of the old world, and then you see him accumulating houses, fields, and a 60-meter yacht, you can get the same hunger and craving for the same things that he was able to get with his skills when your capacity is perhaps even superior to this person. This hunger cannot be satiated; you can never afford the extra imposed by fashion and advertising. They are induced artificial forms of needs; the Christian, too, is tempted to satiate this hunger. He cannot.
Certain comforts the Christian cannot afford when the brother or sister lacks what is necessary, certain expensive designer clothes, and certain jewelry cannot be present in the life of a Christian. Only when everyone has them, but when a brother or sister is in need, you cannot afford to satisfy this hunger. Those who put their brother's needs at the center of all their choices must consider the needs of their brothers. They will go through certain hardships and privations. Sometimes, they may lack what is necessary if the brother is in dire need. But they will be blessed because God will satisfy their hunger for life; they will be living as true children of God. The satiation of a genuinely human life is that of those who love.
And the weeping. Those who choose to enter the kingdom of God will be blessed. Let us not misunderstand this blessing, thinking that God likes pain, no. But by choosing Christ, disciples who are involved in building the new world, what kind of world are they in? It is a harrowing situation that we all know: the situation of misery, wars, and cruelty. In front of this reality, those who want to build a new world suffer. The tears of the disciple are a sign of love, of his passion for God's plan to be realized as soon as possible.
Jesus wept in front of the city of Jerusalem that he loved when he realized that it rejected his proposal; he realized that this city was on the way to ruin, and he wept. These are the tears of those who love. God will comfort those with this love and passion because they want all to be happy. And they should remember that the seeds sown in pain will grow and bear abundant fruits. Psalm 126:6 says: "Those who go forth weeping, carrying sacks of seed, will return with cries of joy, carrying their bundled sheaves.” They are full of joy; it is what God promises to those who even go so far as to weep for love.
The last beatitude: "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil.” Those who behave according to the Gospel must not expect applause because they are making a proposal that is contrary to the old world and, therefore, they will be hated; they will be banished because they will be considered subversive of the established order and of an order which is regarded as suitable by all the justice of this world. ‘To each his own,' but what is his own? Everything belongs to God.
The old world is not resigned to disappear because it is guided by selfishness and interest; it does not want the new humanity to emerge, driven by the logic of love, by the attention to others, by the availability of selfless service, and by the search for the last place. These are proposals that are entirely outside the logic of the old world. ‘Pay attention’—says Jesus—for if people applaud you, you think like them. The disciple is blessed at the very moment when he is persecuted because the persecution is irrefutable proof that the Master's logic is followed and accepted.
Now let us listen to the four 'woes':
“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. But woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets this way.”
The first 'woe' is for the rich. Woe to you, the rich; this 'woe' is a lousy translation! For us, this expression is a threat. This is not the meaning of the expression on the lips of Jesus. Jesus does not threaten punishment; Jesus loves. His is a cry of pain. In Greek, we have 'οὐαὶ = uay,' which refers to a Hebrew term I have already quoted: 'Oi,' which is a funeral lament. In the face of mourning, the person in his grief holds his hands to his head and cries, 'Oi.' What happens is a cry of pain.
This is the cry of Jesus in front of the rich man who did not share his goods with the recipients. Jesus weeps for those who have chosen death; it is a funeral lament: 'You rich man, who is applauded and envied by all... 'Oi'... you have ruined your life.' It would be necessary to translate, 'pity you, rich,' not 'woe.' 'Oi’ because you have caused poverty by accumulating assets you should have given away... You are crazy.' Jesus feels sorry for him; his is a cry of pain because he sees a person who has ruined his life. In the final customs, the goods that have not been delivered to the addressees are requisitioned, and you are left without love; you are dead as a person because you did not love.
The second 'woe': "Woe to you who are satiated." You who have managed the goods of this world for your pleasures, you squander the resources of creation and caused hunger, poverty, the misery of so many people... 'oi' says Jesus. It is a cry of pain over these people, who are failures, dead in life.
The third 'woe': "Woe to you who laugh now!" You laugh, and instead of giving joy to your brothers, you make them cry because you commit injustices and humiliation, which is the cause of the suffering of the weakest; they are the failures in life, the dead. 'Alas' says Jesus and concludes with the last 'oi.' Oi’ to you when all shall applaud you because that happened in the Old Testament with the false prophets. The prophets of lies were praised because they tried to speak not the truth that came from heaven, but they tried to satisfy the desires of their hearers. If they are applauded, it is a sign because, without realizing it, you have adapted yourself to the beatitudes of this world.
With these four funeral laments, today's Gospel is concluded. They help us to reflect. Do we belong to the crowd that listens to the Gospel, or are we true disciples who have elected to give our all to the service of our brothers and sisters and, therefore, to build a life of love? We must ask ourselves: Do I still belong to the multitudes, or have I chosen to be a true disciple?
I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.
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