Blessed February 11

Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD. He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream. Jeremiah 17:7-8

Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way. Luke 6:23

Piety

Let us pray: God, everything we learn from the prophets and from Jesus and from the apostles point us in one direction – the values of your Kingdom differ from the values of the world. From the beginning of time, you want us to trust in you and your word. Help us to reject the easy path of wealth, of power and of materialism. Instead, help us to embrace the path embraced by the prophets and the disciples – poverty, obedience, mercy and love – for your sake. Amen.

Study[1]

http://www.usccb.org/nab/021107.shtml

“Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours.”

Who are the poor in this crowd? They are the disciples who stand as examples to the crowd. The disciples have “left everything.” They were part of the crowd but have “renounced everything” at the call of Jesus. Peter left his fishing boats. Matthew left his tax collecting. “Now they are living in want and privation, the poorest of the poor, the sorest afflicted, and the hungriest of the hungry. They have only him, and with him they have nothing, literally nothing in the world, but everything with and through God.”

They are not blessed in and of themselves. They are blessed because they find themselves in this state because they heard the call and answered it.

Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied.

Even the most basic level of needs will not be met through what we term the “Protestant work ethic.” Instead, these basic needs will be met only by fully relying upon God. Hear the message about the disciples. Can you come to that same point? Can you refuse to be on terms with the world, or to accommodate yourself to the standards of the world? “The world dreams of progress, of power, and of the future but the disciples mediate on the end, the last judgment, and the coming of the kingdom.”

Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh.

They are weeping because they reject the world. And for that act, the world also rejects them as well. The disciple stands to suffer for a just cause. Such rejection will leave us with physical pain and emotional scars. Are you willing to leave all of your rights to God alone, not to the state or the community? Then you will have the last laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.

The world will be offended because it does not understand what the disciples are doing. Therefore, the disciples will face the same kind of rejection that Jesus faces. Jesus is just trying to get you and His followers prepared for that kind of reaction.

Bonhoeffer points out that clearly there is one place and only one where the poor, the hungry, the weeping and the rejected will gather – at the foot of the cross on Calvary. The fellowship of the beatitudes is the fellowship of the Crucified. While Jesus calls these followers “blessed,” for your perfect obedience, for imitating the Father in perfection, love and mercy, the world cries: “Away with them. Crucify them.”

Action

Legislators in at least half a dozen states are considering widening the provisions of the death penalty – countering the forces of a nation trend to reign in such provisions elsewhere. This includes our own home state of Virginia where we have, ironically, a Catholic seated in the governor’s mansion in Richmond. That Catholic man, Governor Tim Kaine, has to affix his signature on any bill expanding the death penalty in the Commonwealth.

While the world cries “Away with them,” let us join our voices together and reject such actions in favor of love and mercy. After all, a perfectly fine alternative exists – life in prison without reward of parole – if found guilty in a court. For the alternative has no fail-safe if later on the trial is shown to be unfair or wrong. You can let a condemned person out of jail if there is a miscarriage of justice. You can not reverse the death penalty once “executed.”

Encourage your state legislators to reject the expansion of the death penalty provisions. If they pass, encourage Governor Kaine to veto these kinds of measures.

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[1] See chapter 6 of The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York: Touchstone Books) for source material on this treatment of the Beatitudes.