Sunday Gospel Comment
Alberic Jacovone OSB
YEAR C SIXTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - 15.2.04 Jer 17,5-8; 1 Cor 15,12.16-20; Lk 6,17.20-26 You can feel Blessed or Cursed A
Hunger & a Thirst.
Today, Luke gives us his version of Jesus’ Beatitudes. He does it in a
forceful way. He wants us to be sure about the solid ‘road-base’ on which
our faith is founded, & to beware of the ‘what’s in it for me’?.. Far
from using wisdom-language, as Matthew does, & presenting Jesus as a
far-away teacher-of-all-time, proclaiming time-less wisdom, as if the message is
not for us but for those horrible sinners in our society... Luke is starkly
aggressive: he presents Jesus, pressed by large crowds who had come from
everywhere and were drawn to him by his powerful healing energy... But this
Jesus is not addressing this crowd; on the contrary & on purpose, Jesus
looks-hard at his disciples (talmidim) & addresses them. By such a device,
Luke says to us: if you consider yourself to be a true-blue, devoted disciple of
Jesus, then today, Jesus is looking hard at you & addresses to you
personally with his beatitudes and ‘woes’. On purpose Luke uses the literary
form of ‘quatrains’ or four-liner device, and to us ‘goodies’, Jesus
says: 1.) “Blessed (makarioi) are you who are poor & powerless -
2.) you who are hungry - 3.)
you who weep - 4.) you
who are: 1.) hated - 2.) expelled -
3.) insulted - 4.) and criminalized”. (Notice the quatrain of 4 You,
the last of which has four adjectives. The arrangement in quatrains is a good
mnemonic device, to acquaint us with the realization that life’s conflicts and
contradictions are essential to Christian life: indeed it has to be so &
it’s God’s way!. Luke says: if any disfunctioning is thrown at you right
now: ‘rejoice & dance for joy’.... But this is not all: immediately
after this, Jesus continues to address his devoted disciples and us (as today,
we claim to be his enthusiastic disciples).
And on us, Luke smashes the quatrain of
‘woes’: 1.) “But woe
to you who are rich now - 2.) you who are wastefully-fed now - 3.)
you who are sarcastically laughing now -
4.) you who are obsequiously feared now... (the other quatrains
will be dealt with next Sunday). Do-gooders
risk missing out.
In the past as indeed among us today, people assume that a strong Christian
faith, enables us to be strong, move mountains, work miracles, have power of
healing. Of course this is the case, but only on condition that it never wipes
out from our life, the need to
accept the cross, suffer & die, as Jesus did and in union with Him. There is
a danger of assuming that God’s grace automatically transforms us into people
who are strong, superior, endowed, able, in charge;... people who are in the
know & the have; people engaged in providing & dispensing to others - in
situations where the poor - hungry - traumatized - discriminated - dehumanized
are always ‘them’ never ‘us’. This point is essential to understanding
what the Gospel is all about. To miss it would mean to wipe out the meaning of
the Passion, Cross and Suffering of our Lord from God’s plan. Not only did our
Lord suffer and die for our salvation, but it had to happen that way: there is
no salvation without accepting our share in life’s suffering and crosses that
rightly or wrongly come our way. Sure enough, the life of every human being is
beset with evils. When tragedy / conflict strikes, Jesus offers us the choice to
change -with God’s grace- our curses into blessings & our tragedies into
opportunities. Jesus can never feed our ambition to become powerful &
untouchable, superior & arrogant. On the contrary, his manifesto about
happiness & ‘woes’, and even more so his atrocities suffered for us on
the cross, as indeed God’s own infinite mercy: all these give new hope to the
inevitable, tragic, ‘sour’ sense of life. Lesson:
gain life, never hoard it or flaunt it. ______________________________________ |
