6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jeremiah 17:5-8 Luke 6:17, 20-26
It can be very interesting and curious how some event can be recorded differently by different reporters! The same message can be conveyed with varied emphases and can impact the recipients accordingly.
We are, perhaps, more familiar with Saint Matthew’s account of Jesus teaching the ‘Beatitudes’. Matthew’s description of the event is very solemn; ‘Jesus went up on the mountain …… and sat down’. So many of the important events in the life of Jesus were ‘up a mountain’, giving them dignity and awe. ‘He sat down …..’ – Rabbis and teachers always ‘sat down’ when proclaiming what was important and solemn. (When the Pope makes the most profound statements he speaks ‘ex cathedra’!) Matthew’s account of this teaching of Jesus is gentle, spiritual, uplifting and comforting. Eternal awards await those who are faithful.
Saint Luke, the more down-to-earth evangelist, has Jesus standing on ‘a piece of level ground’ – on the same level and eye-to-eye with those who are listening. Jesus is addressing real people - the poor, the hungry, the weepers and the persecuted - and assuring them that they are ‘Blessed’. But there is the other side of humanity which must be addressed also. The ‘Alas for you’ which Jesus utters could be translated as ‘Woe to you’ or ‘how horrible it will be for you’! How horrible it will be for those who are wallowing in their own satisfaction and comfort and full of their own importance. Saint Luke emphasises that Jesus came to call sinners and while Jesus does indeed promise ‘Blessedness’ and Happiness to those who are faithful He also warns against the sin and selfishness which were the marks of the ‘false prophets’ of old.
For us, the big difference between Saint Matthew’s version of “Blessed are the Poor in spirit” (Mt 5:3) and Saint Luke’s “Blessed are you, who are poor …” (Lk 6:20) is that it addresses US. We stop, we listen, and we take note. This is a teaching for US.
In the first reading of today’s Mass Jeremiah uses the same tactic to draw our attention: “A curse on the one who puts trust in humans”- “A blessing on the one who puts trust in God … “ This is for US!!
Pope Francis puts it very well for us in Gaudium et Exsultate 63; “Jesus explained with great simplicity what it means to be holy when He gave us the Beatitudes (cf. Matt 5:3-12; Luke 6:20-23) The Beatitudes are like a Christian’s identity card. So if anyone asks: “What must I do to be a good Christian?” the answer is clear. We have to do, each in our own way, what Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount. In the Beatitudes, we find a portrait of the Master, which we are called to reflect in our daily lives”.
What Saint Gregory the Great says of all Scripture applies very much to the Beatitudes; “Cum legentibus crescit” – it grows with the person’s reading of it. Saint Luke recalls the teaching of Jesus for that we might read it over and over and let the ‘Christian identity card’ become our own.