“…for righteousness” seemed less concrete, for I believed and I do believe that Jesus came to announce the kingdom to those who are poor, particularly in a material sense, to those whose basic needs are not being met.
So where does that leave the rest of us, who are well fed and sheltered and have adequate clothing to keep us warm on these chilly autumn nights? I don’t think I was able to make meaning of that question until a few years later.
Over two years ago, I lost someone who was very dear to me. In that grief, I recalled the grief of other significant losses in my life, including the death of my cousin ten years ago. Over weeks and months, I came to understand all too well what it meant to be “poor in spirit.” And I have been waiting to realize that Kingdom of God that Jesus promised. There were glimpses of it in the kindnesses and care that people extended to me at that time, but there were also too many days filled with tears and mourning. However, it was at that time that I finally began to find myself in the crowd listening to Jesus’ ‘good news.’ I could stand side by side with others who suffer and that changed me.
Essentially, both versions of the beatitudes give us an important understanding of the Kingdom. What God desires for us is to be in right relationship with God, to be faithful to a loving covenant with God by being loving to one another. From Matthew’s gospel, we know that Jesus spent some time traveling throughout Galilee teaching and preaching and healing. In his travels, people began to learn about him and follow him. A large crowd had gathered around Jesus when he went up to the mountain top to sit as rabbi, as teacher and share the good news to those most in need of healing. His message was a radical one; of that, there is no doubt. He reversed the norms of his time. You can imagine the sundry group of folk that gathered out in the countryside to sit and listen. As he spoke, he offered real hope to these people. They heard themselves and their lives in his words. They found themselves among the blessed.
We too can find ourselves among the blessed, and maybe that is why Luke and Matthew chose to offer slightly different versions of this reading. Perhaps they understood as Jesus did that people are broken and in need of healing, both in the physical and spiritual sense. When I was in Nicaragua, as I made my way carefully through the back roads of a poor barrio, I found the traveling difficult. As I sat in the midst of this small dwelling, my heart was filled with compassion for these women struggling with lives of material poverty. And yet, I believe they felt compassion for my spiritual poverty. Their faith was immense; they felt God among them. They heard those words of Jesus as if He were seated in the midst of us. And I, I heard them from a distance.
Two years later when I found myself in the midst of deep grief, I remembered those women. They had said to me that day, “We are the Church.” As a community, they understood the real significance of Church as the people of God. And the message of Jesus was how to be Church, how to be blessings for one another. So I could find myself in the words of Jesus, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are you who weep and mourn…” I began to understand the kinds of suffering that exist within the world, and I found it easier to sit with those who suffer because we met on common ground.
There is no monopoly on suffering in the world and there is no monopoly on God’s love. Our hope is that we may gain strength and confidence from that love and in turn express that love by building the kingdom… by comforting each other when we weep and mourn, by challenging each other to live in right relationship with God by being in right relationship with one another. We can be the stepping stones along that difficult path for one another. Our lives are not fresh-paved, tree-lined highways on which we can easily travel. More often, we encounter deep pot holes of water and muddy pathways. And what is most important are those who accompany us on the journey. The welcoming faces of the women that day made me feel blessed.
Jesus spoke in seemingly contradictory ways. In his day, the people were baffled by his words… How is it that the meek should be blessed? How is it that we bless peacemakers when we make heroes of our military leaders? Love our enemies? It’s too hard. His words hold the same challenge for us today. And yet, if we seek the Kingdom for ourselves and those we love, then we must be cocreators with our God. Jesus’ words offer us a glimpse of what it means. We ask ourselves, Who are the people in our lives that help us to feel blessed? To whom can we be blessings?
Paula A. Norbert
Boston College