Picture, if you will, these
two Russian peasants, Ivan and Peter, gloriously in their cups one night
in a country tavern. Carrying on and slapping each other on the back,
they get to telling each other what great friends they are. Then, in a
lucid moment, Ivan looks at Peter and says, "Peter, tell me, what is it
that hurts me?" Bleary-eyed Peter shoots back to Ivan, "How would I know
what hurts you?" Ivan shoots back, "If you don't know what hurts me, how
can you say you’re my friend?"
It may be a stretch, but
that little story got me thinking about Jesus and our friendship with
him. What is it that makes Jesus the perfect friend? Isn’t it that he is
fully in touch with – fully embraces - all that is human, including
human hurts, human heartaches, human pain? Our hurts, our heartaches,
our pain. Time and again in the Gospels we witness the compassionate
Jesus who knew human struggles and sufferings like no other. He spent
much of his time in the company of people who were just plain hurting.
He readily forgave sinners and was a pushover when it came to the sick,
the blind, the deaf, the mute. He gave peace of mind to the disturbed,
made lepers clean and the lame leap to their feet. Jesus instinctively
felt what those people were feeling, knew their pain, their hurts - not
because he was the all-knowing God, but because he himself was so
completely human.
It is this Jesus who
says, "Blessed are you who are poor; blessed are you who are hungry;
blessed are you who are weeping; blessed are you when people hate you."
How could he say such seemingly incongruous things? I think it’s that,
in one way or another, he knew those hurts himself, and he also knew
that he was blessed. He could say, "Blessed are you poor," because he
was poor: born poor, lived poor, and had no place to lay his head. And
he could say, "Blessed are you who are hungry," because he knew hunger -
he who fasted for forty days and nights and who wouldn’t send a hungry
crowd away without feeding them. And he could say, "Blessed are you who
are weeping," because he knew what tears were - he who wept over
Jerusalem and shed tears at the death of his friend, Lazarus. And he
could say, "Blessed are you when people hate you," because he knew the
hurt of hatred and rejection – he whose fellow villagers tried to cast
him off a cliff, he who “came to his own and his own received him not.”
The Beatitudes of Luke’s gospel are a challenge to all, but they are
also a window onto the very heart of Jesus.
But we have to be
careful here. The Jesus who knows what hurts us humans and who reminds
us where true blessedness is to be found would not want us to hide
behind the Beatitudes as an excuse for canonizing the status quo. True,
the poor we will "always have with us", and there will always be hunger
and hurt in this world, but the same Jesus who told the poor and hungry,
the weeping and the despised, that they were blessed, also told his
followers that their blessedness would come from reaching out in love to
these very people.
And that takes us to the
second part of Jesus' sermon from today's Gospel. First there were the
Beatitudes, and then came the "woes." "Woe to you who are rich; woe to
you who are full now; woe to you who laugh now; woe to you when everyone
speaks well of you."
If we are challenged by
the Beatitudes - and we should be - the “woes” should totally pierce our
complacency. For Jesus addresses those woes to us - we who are rich -
not all of us, of course, but most of us, and I include myself. We have
more money, more things than most people in the world: more food, more
drink, more creature comforts, more security. So, yes, we need to hear
those woes and take them to heart.
But maybe we will be
able to hear them better if we give them a little twist, a positive
twist, if you will. So, instead of "Woe to you rich", how about "Blessed
are you rich” – blessed are you who have money and power. Why? Well,
because with all you have, you can do so much good, so much for the
poor! Blessed are you rich, but only if you realize that you are
stewards of your possessions, not owners; only if you do not place your
trust in what you own. Blessed are you rich, but only if you share what
you have with your sisters and brothers who have not. Only then are you
truly blessed.
And instead of “Woe to
you who are full now,” how about "Blessed are you who are full now”?
Why? Well, because you are strong enough and healthy enough to do for
others – to feed and care for the hungry. Blessed are you, but only if
you do not take your food for granted, and only if you are
uncomfortable, deeply uncomfortable, as long as there is even one
brother or sister who cries out for bread or for justice, and only if
you are in touch with how profoundly empty you are without God.
And lastly, instead of
“Woe to you who laugh now,” how about "Blessed are you who laugh now”?
Blessed are you because you can bring joy to others - to those whose
days are often drowning in tears, whose lives are one long agony after
another. Blessed are you who laugh, yes, but only if it means that you
don't take yourselves too seriously: that you are able to laugh at
yourselves, and that you make room in your life for those for whom
laughter is a little-known luxury. Blessed are you who laugh."
My friends in Christ,
the little story about the two drunken peasants stated the simple truth
that if we’re really going to love someone, we need to know that
person’s hurts. May we awaken to a whole world around us that is
hurting. Only then will we truly love, and only then will we be truly
blessed!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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