16 February 2025, Sixth Sunday, Year C: Jeremiah 17:5-8; 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20; Luke 6:17, 20-25
Blessed are the poor; not the poor in spirit but the poor.
Scholars explain that Luke’s Christian community was probably very poor, but that fails to tell my why they are blessed. Is it beatitude when you have nothing to feed your children? Is it blessed to shiver in rags when the winter rain comes, and you have just a few twigs for the fire? Or when a young mother dies for lack of medical care?
Or are you blessed when you share what little you have with someone less fortunate than yourself? Or when you receive some help? Or when you realize that God is your only strength.
The corresponding woe is equally challenging: woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
What rich person ever has enough money? Isn’t there always another threat, another reason not to share excess wealth with the needy? Can wealth buy friendship or health or respect—or even credibility? Can riches fend off death?
What sort of consolation is it to be rich?
Of course, Saint Luke is looking forward to an eschatological future when real justice will be delivered; but the blessing or the woe is now, is in the present tense.
As usual, I have more questions than answers. But doesn’t this Gospel challenge the American Dream, challenge what we often presume makes life good? Couldn’t these beatitudes and woes push us to a deeper, more open-ended relationship with God, even in the most mundane and secular matters?