When I attended Mass this morning, I could not believe how appropriate today's gospel is.
I pray everyday that God does bless America, and also those countries that desperately need His guidance and intervention.
God bless,
EODGUY
Thanks BigMack, that is an awesome reflection.
I'll post another quote from the commentary on this Gospel.
"The Beatitudes are incredible! What a gift He has given us with His words. A roadmap for life."
Precisely!
God bless,
EODGUY
JMJ333, I started this thread back in July and just brought it forward again today because of Luke's Gospel. If I remember correctly, I was just compiling a Ping List at that time. My apologies.
Its not a problem. I am probably going to take a break like Siobhan. I can't take this place right now. I am so mad at HDMZ that I could explode. Pray for me because I need it.
Here is the commentary on the Gospel from Luke today.
Gospel:The Beatitudes and the Curses
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Commentary:
20-49. These thirty verses of St. Luke correspond to some extent to the Sermon on the Mount, an extensive account of which St. Matthew gives us in Chapters 5 to 7 in his Gospel. It is very likely that in the course of His public ministry in different regions and towns of Israel Jesus preached the same things, using different words on different occasions. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit each evangelist would have chosen to report those things which he considered most useful for the instruction of his immediate readers--Christians of Jewish origin in the case of Matthew, Gentile converts in the case of Luke. There is no reason why one evangelist should not have selected certain items and another different ones, depending on his readership, or why one should not have laid special stress on some subjects and shortened or omitted accounts of others.
In this present discourse, we might distinguish three parts--the Beatitudes and the curses (6:20-26); love of one's enemies (6:27-38); and teaching on uprightness of heart (6:39-49).
Some Christians may find it difficult to grasp the need of practising the moral teaching of the Gospel so radically, in particular Christ's teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is very demanding in what He says, but He is saying it to everyone, and not just to His Apostles or to those disciples who followed Him closely. We are told expressly that "when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at His teaching" (Matthew 7:28). It is quite clear that the Master calls everyone to holiness, making no distinction of state-in-life, race or personal circumstances. This teaching on the universal call to holiness was a central point of the teaching of (Blessed) Monsignor Escriva de Balaguer. The Second Vatican Council expressed the same teaching with the full weight of its authority: everyone is called to Christian holiness; consider, for example, just one reference it makes, in "Lumen Gentium", 11: "Strengthened by so many and such great means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state--though each in his or her own way--are called by the Lord to that perfection of sanctity by which the Father Himself is perfect."
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is not proposing an unattainable ideal, useful though that might be to make us feel humble in the light of our inability to reach it. No. Christian teaching in this regard is quite clear: what Christ commands, He commands in order to have us do what He says. Along with His commandment comes grace to enable us to fulfill it. Therefore, every Christian is capable of practising the moral teaching of Christ and of attaining the full height of his calling--holiness--not by his own efforts alone but by means of the grace which Christ has won for us, and with the abiding help of the means of sanctification which He left to His Church. "If anyone plead human weakness to excuse Himself for not loving God, it should be explained that He who demands our love pours into our hearts by the Holy Spirit the fervor of His love, and this good Spirit our Heavenly Father gives to those that ask Him. With reason, therefore, did St. Augustine pray: `Give Me what Thou command, and command what You please.' As, then, God is ever ready to help us, especially since the death of Christ our Lord, by which the prince of this world was cast out, there is no reason why anyone should be disheartened by the difficulty of the undertaking. To him who loves, nothing is difficult" ("St. Pius V Catechism", III, 1, 7).
20-26. The eight Beatitudes which St. Matthew gives (5:3-12) are summed up in four by St. Luke, but with four opposite curses. We can say, with St. Ambrose, that Matthew's eight are included in Luke's four (cf. "Expositio Evangelii Sec. Lucam, in loc."). In St. Luke they are in some cases stated in a more incisive, more direct form than in the First Gospel, where they are given with more explanation: for example, the first beatitude says simply "Blessed are you poor", whereas in Matthew we read, "Blessed are the poor in spirit", which contains a brief explanation of the virtue of poverty.
20. "The ordinary Christian has to reconcile two aspects of this life that can at first seem contradictory. There is on the one hand "true poverty", which is obvious and tangible and made up of definite things. This poverty should be an expression of faith in God and a sign that the heart is not satisfied with created things and aspires to the Creator; that it wants to be filled with love of God so as to be able to give this same love to everyone. On the other hand, an ordinary Christian is and wants to be "one more among his fellow men", sharing their way of life, their joys and happiness; working with them, loving the world and all the good things that exist in it; using all created things to solve the problems of human life and to establish a spiritual and material environment which will foster personal and social development [...].
"To my way of thinking the best examples of poverty are those mothers and fathers of large and poor families who spend their lives for their children and who with their effort and constancy--often without complaining of their needs--bring up their family, creating a cheerful home in which everyone learns to love, to serve and to work" ([Blessed] J. Escriva, "Conversations", 110f).
24-26. Our Lord here condemns four things: avarice and attachment to the things of the world; excessive care of the body, gluttony; empty-headed joy and general self-indulgence; flattery, and disordered desire for human glory--four very common vices which a Christian needs to be on guard against.
24. In the same kind of way as in verse 20, which refers to the poor in the sense of those who love poverty, seeking to please God better, so in this verse the "rich" are to be understood as those who strive to accumulate possessions heedless of whether or not they are doing so lawfully, and who seek their happiness in those possessions, as if they were their ultimate goal. But people who inherit wealth or acquire it through honest work can be really poor provided they are detached from these things and are led by that detachment to use them to help others, as God inspires them. We can find in Sacred Scriptures a number of people to whom the beatitude of the poor can be applied although they possessed considerable wealth--Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David, Job, for example.
As early as St. Augustine's time there were people who failed to understand poverty and riches properly: they reasoned as follows: The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the poor, the Lazaruses of this world, the hungry; all the rich are bad, like this rich man here. This sort of thinking led St. Augustine to explain the deep meaning of wealth and poverty according to the spirit of the Gospel: "Listen, poor man, to my comments on your words. When you refer to yourself as Lazarus, that holy man covered with wounds, I am afraid your pride makes you describe yourself incorrectly. Do not despise rich men who are merciful, who are humble: or, to put it briefly, do not despise poor rich men. Oh, poor man, be poor yourself; poor, that is, humble [...]. Listen to me, then. Be truly poor, be devout, be humble; if you glory in your ragged and ulcerous poverty, if you glory in likening yourself to that beggar lying outside the rich man's house, then you are only noticing his poverty, and nothing else. What should I notice you ask? Read the Scriptures and you will understand what I mean. Lazarus was poor, but he to whose bosom he was brought was rich. `It came to pass, it is written, that the poor man died and he was brought by the angels to Abraham's bosom.' To where? To Abraham's bosom, or let us say, to that mysterious place where Abraham was resting. Read [...] and remember that Abraham was a very wealthy man when he was on earth: he had abundance of money, a large family, flocks, land; yet that rich man was poor, because he was humble. `Abraham believed God and he was reckoned righteous.' [...] He was faithful, he did good, received the commandment to offer his son in sacrifice, and he did not refuse to offer what he had received to Him from whom he had received it. He was approved in God's sight and set before us as an example of faith" ("Sermon", 14).
To sum up: poverty does not consist in something purely external, in having or not having material goods, but in something that goes far deeper, affecting a person's heart and soul; it consists in having a humble attitude to God, in being devout, in having total faith. If a Christian has these virtues and also has an abundance of material possessions, he should be detached from his wealth and act charitably towards others and thus be pleasing to God. On the other hand, if someone is not well-off he is not justified in God's sight on that account, if he fails to strive to acquire those virtues in which true poverty consists.
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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland.
Beatitude Bump for St. Matthew -- 11-01-03
There is one more comparison. The passage in 2 Peter lines up nicely with the first part of Romans 5. Romans 5 shows us what God works in us. 2 Peter shows our side of the responsibility.
Wonderful ,thoughtful post. We all should reflect on the Beatitudes more often, for in them is centered the Christian life we are to lead.
Poised woman, I agree, Freepers are not often merciful, and I am sometimes guilty of that myself, especially on the politics threads. It is funny as that is the one verse in the group that I repeat to myself most often.
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
From: Matthew 5:1-12a
The Beatitudes
[1] Seeing the crowds, He (Jesus) went up on the mountain, and when He
sat down His disciples came to Him. [2] And He opened His mouth and
taught them, saying: [3] "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is
the Kingdom of Heaven. [4] Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall
be comforted. [5] Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the
earth. [6] Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied. [7] Blessed are the merciful, for they
shall obtain mercy. [8] Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall
see God. [9] Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called
children of God. [10] Blessed are those who are persecuted for
righteousness' sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. [11] Blessed
are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of
evil against you falsely on My account. [12] Rejoice and be glad, for
your reward is great in Heaven."
Commentary:
1. The Discourse, or Sermon, on the Mount takes up three full chapters
of St. Matthew's Gospel--Chapters 5-7. It is the first of the five
great discourses of Jesus which appear in this Gospel and it contains a
considerable amount of our Lord's teaching.
It is difficult to reduce this discourse to one single theme, but the
various teachings it contains could be said to deal with these five
points: 1) the attitude a person must have for entering the Kingdom of
Heaven (the Beatitudes, the salt of the earth, the light of the world,
Jesus and His teaching, the fullness of the Law); 2) uprightness of
intention in religious practice (here the "Our Father" would be
included); 3) trust in God's fatherly providence; 4) how God's children
should behave towards one another (not judging one's neighbor, respect
for holy things, the effectiveness of prayer, and the golden rule of
charity); 5) the conditions for entering the Kingdom (the narrow gate,
false prophets and building on rock).
"He taught them": this refers both to the disciples and to the
multitude, as can be seen at the end of the Sermon (Matthew 7:28).
2. The Beatitudes (5:3-12) form, as it were, the gateway to the Sermon
on the Mount. In order to understand the Beatitudes properly, we
should bear in mind that they do not promise salvation only to the
particular kinds of people listed here: they cover everyone whose
religious dispositions and moral conduct meet the demands which Jesus
lays down. In other words, the poor in spirit, the meek, those who
mourn, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful,
the pure in heart, the peacemakers and those who suffer persecution in
their search for holiness--these are not different people or kinds of
people but different demands made on everyone who wants to be a
disciple of Christ.
Similarly, salvation is not being promised to different groups in
society but to everyone, no matter what his or her position in life,
who strives to follow the spirit and to meet the demands contained in
the Beatitudes.
All the Beatitudes have an eschatological meaning, that is, they
promise us definitive salvation not in this world, but in the next.
But the spirit of the Beatitudes does give us, in this life, peace in
the midst of tribulation. The Beatitudes imply a completely new
approach, quite at odds with the usual way man evaluates things: they
rule out any kind of pharisaical religiosity, which regards earthly
happiness as a blessing from God and a reward for good behavior, and
unhappiness and misfortune as a form of punishment. In all ages the
Beatitudes put spiritual goods on a much higher plane than material
possessions. The healthy and the sick, the powerful and the weak, the
rich and the poor--all are called, independently of their
circumstances, to the deep happiness that is experienced by those who
live up to the Beatitudes which Jesus teaches.
The Beatitudes do not, of course, contain the entire teaching of the
Gospel, but they do contain, in embryo, the whole program of Christian
perfection.
3. This text outlines the connection between poverty and the soul.
This religious concept of poverty was deeply rooted in the Old
Testament (cf., e.g., Zephaniah 2:3ff). It was more to do with a
religious attitude of neediness and of humility towards God than with
material poverty: that person is poor who has recourse to God without
relying on his own merits and who trusts in God's mercy to be saved.
This religious attitude of poverty is closely related to what is called
"spiritual childhood". A Christian sees himself as a little child in
the presence of God, a child who owns nothing: everything he has comes
from God and belongs to God. Certainly, spiritual poverty, that is,
Christian poverty, means one must be detached from material things and
practice austerity in using them. God asks certain
people--religious--to be legally detached from ownership and thereby
bear witness to others of the transitoriness of earthly things.
4. "Those who mourn": here our Lord is saying that those are blessed
who suffer from any kind of affliction--particularly those who are
genuinely sorry for they sins, or are pained by the offenses which
others offer God, and who bear their suffering with love and in a
spirit of atonement.
"You are crying? Don't be ashamed of it. Yes, cry: men also cry like
you, when they are alone and before God. Each night, says King David,
I soak my bed with tears. With those tears, those burning manly tears,
you can purify your past and supernaturalize your present life"
([St] J. Escriva, "The Way", 216).
The Spirit of God will console with peace and joy, even in this life,
those who weep for their sins, and later will give them a share in the
fullness of happiness and glory in Heaven: these are the blessed.
5. "The meek": those who patiently suffer unjust persecution; those who
remain serene, humble and steadfast in adversity, and do not give way
to resentment or discouragement. The virtue of meekness is very
necessary in the Christian life. Usually irritableness, which is very
common, stems from a lack of humility and interior peace.
"The earth": this is usually understood as meaning our Heavenly
Fatherland.
6. The notion of righteousness (or justice) in Holy Scripture is an
essentially religious one (cf. notes on Matthew 1:19 and 3:15; Romans
1:17; 1:18-32; 3:21-22 and 24). A righteous person is one who
sincerely strives to do the Will of God, which is discovered in the
commandments, in one's duties of state in life (social, professional
and family responsibilities) and through one's life of prayer. Thus,
righteousness, in the language of the Bible, is the same as what
nowadays is usually called "holiness" (1 John 2:29; 3:7-10; Revelation
22:11; Genesis 15:6; Deuteronomy 9:4).
As St. Jerome comments ("Comm. on Matthew", 5, 6), in the fourth
Beatitude our Lord is asking us not simply to have a vague desire for
righteousness: we should hunger and thirst for it, that is, we should
love and strive earnestly to seek what makes a man righteous in God's
eyes. A person who genuinely wants to attain Christian holiness should
love the means which the Church, the universal vehicle of salvation,
offers all men and teaches them to use--frequent use of the Sacraments,
an intimate relationship with God in prayer, a valiant effort to meet
one's social, professional and family responsibilities.
7. Mercy is not a just a matter of giving alms to the poor but also of
being understanding towards other people's defects, overlooking them,
helping them cope with them and loving them despite whatever defects
they may have. Being merciful also means rejoicing and suffering with
other people.
8. Christ teaches us that the source of the quality of human acts lies
in the heart, that is, in a man's soul, in the depths of his spirit.
"When we speak of a person's heart, we refer not just to his
sentiments, but to the whole person in his loving dealings with
others. In order to help us understand divine things, Scripture uses
the expression `heart' in its full human meaning, as the summary and
source, expression and ultimate basis, of one's thoughts, words and
actions. A man is worth what his heart is worth" ([St] J. Escriva, "Christ
Is Passing By", 164).
Cleanness of heart is a gift of God, which expresses itself in a
capacity to love, in having an upright and pure attitude to everything
noble. As St. Paul says, "whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is
gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of
praise, think about these things" (Philippians 4:8). Helped by God's
grace, a Christian should constantly strive to cleanse his heart and
acquire this purity, whose reward is the vision of God.
9. The translation "peacemakers" well convey the active meaning of the
original text--those who foster peace, in themselves and in others and,
as a basis for that, try to be reconciled and to reconcile others with
God. Being at peace with God is the cause and effect of every kind of
peace. Any peace on earth not based on this divine peace would be vain
and misleading.
"They shall be called sons of God": this is an Hebraicism often found
in Sacred Scripture; it is the same as saying "they will be sons of
God". St. John's first letter (3:1) provides a correct exegesis of
this Beatitude: "See what love the Father has given us, that we should
be called children of God; and so we are".
10. What this Beatitude means, then, is: blessed are those who are
persecuted because they are holy, or because they are striving to be
holy, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Thus, blessed is he who suffers persecution for being true to Jesus
Christ and who does so not only patiently but joyfully. Circumstances
arise in a Christian's life that call for heroism--where no compromise
is admissible: either one stays true to Jesus Christ whatever the cost
in terms of reputation, life or possessions, or one denies Him. St.
Bernard ("Sermon on the Feast of All Saints") says that the eighth
Beatitude is as it were the prerogative of Christian martyrs. Every
Christian who is faithful to Jesus' teaching is in fact a "martyr" (a
witness) who reflects or acts according with this Beatitude, even if he
does not undergo physical death.
11-12. The Beatitudes are the conditions Jesus lays down for entering
the Kingdom of Heaven. This verse, in a way summing up the preceding
ones, is an invitation to everyone to put this teaching into practice.
The Christian life, then, is no easy matter, but it is worthwhile,
given the reward that Jesus promises.
Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text
taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries
made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of
Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock,
Co. Dublin, Ireland.