Today Jesus preaches the greatest homily ever preached. It’s sometimes called the Sermon on the Mount or the Beatitudes, and it consists of a long list of impossible things.
Jesus tells us the poor are blessed, the hungry will be full, mourners will laugh, and those who are hated, insulted and denounced by all will leap for joy!
Seems impossible, doesn’t it? In human terms it is: impossible, simply impossible. But with God all things are possible and for those with faith the size of a mustard seed and move mountains if we will but trust in his plan for us.
Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours…But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
For if you are a follower of Jesus, you will look for him not in the high and mighty, but in those who are powerless and grovel in the dirt with empty stomachs and desperate lives...and like the one who was born in a manger, you find happiness not in what you cling to, but what you let go of.
Mother Theresa said it best:
“The shut-in, the unwanted, the unloved, the alcoholics, the dying destitutes, the abandoned and the lonely, the outcasts and untouchables, the leprosy sufferers—all those who are a burden to human society, who have lost all hope and faith in life, who have forgotten how to smile, who have lost the sensibility of the warm hand-touch of love and friendship—they look to us for comfort. If we turn our back on them, we turn it on Christ, and at the hour of our death we shall be judged if we have recognized Christ in them, and on what we have done for and to them.”
Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied….Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry.
For if you are a follower of Jesus, you will seek out the hungry and feed them. Not just those who hunger for food, but those who hunger for love.
Let’s let Mother Theresa keep preaching this homily:
“The world today is hungry not only for bread but hungry for love; hungry to be wanted, to be loved. They’re hungry to feel that presence of Christ.…We are called to love the world. And God loved the world so much that he gave Jesus. Today he loves the world so much that he gives you and he gives me to be his love, his compassion, and that presence, that life of prayer, of sacrifice, of surrender to God.”
Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep.
Blessed are you who weep. For if you are a follower of Jesus, you will stand with his mother at the foot of the Cross, you will pick up whatever cross he sends you and ascend whatever Calvary he sets before you.
Saint Polycarp, whose feast we will celebrate next Saturday, understood what it meant to weep. His generation was the one which followed the Apostles, and he is said to have been ordained a Bishop by Saint John himself. Yet he also lived in an age of persecution, where refusing to burn incense in worship of the Emperor was punishable by death.
He was martyred by fire and the spear, but is said to have yelled our from behind the flames: “This fire is but for a season and will soon go out. But I will live forever with God, who has judged me worthy to share the cup of Christ.”
So, blessed are you when you are poor or persecuted, hungry or weeping. For when you are, you are following Theresa and Polycarp and the Lord.
