Blessed Are the Poor
 This Sunday in the Gospel we hear Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, which differs significantly from Matthew’s version. The first difference is the setting. Matthew’s Gospel has Jesus giving the “Sermon on the Mount,” establishing him as the “new Moses,” who went up Mount Sinai and delivered the law. Luke’s version says that Jesus “came down...and stood on a stretch of level ground,” and so this is sometimes called the “Sermon on the Plain.” There is a beautiful, incarnational sense of “Divine condescension” here - our God is coming down to be with us and to teach us. Then, in the first of Luke’s Beatitudes Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor,” whereas Matthew’s version says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Those two little words - “in spirit” - make a big difference. To be “poor in spirit” (often interpreted as “humble”) is one thing, but to be materially poor is quite another. How can we both proclaim the poor to be “blessed” and work to end poverty? The key is, of course, that poverty in itself is not a good, but something we should work to alleviate and eliminate. What Jesus is telling us here is essentially that the poor hold a special place in God’s heart, and in that sense they are “blessed.” This is the basis for the Church’s understanding of the “preferential option for the poor” in Catholic social teaching. This also got me thinking about the concepts of simplicity of life (to which I believe all Christians are called) and even voluntary poverty. I don’t claim to have any “one size fits all” answers, but I think this passage certainly calls us to reexamine our relationship to material wealth if we would inherit the kingdom of God. Fr. Thom |
|
