The Path of Blessedness at a Time of Crisis, Tenth Monday (II), June 8, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time, Year II
June 8, 2020
1 Kings 17:1-6, Ps 121, Mt 5:1-12

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today, on Monday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time, we begin twelve weeks of focus at daily Mass on the Gospel of St. Matthew, which will accompany us through the end of August. As we always do, we begin with the most famous part of the Gospel of St. Matthew, which is likewise one of its most important passages: the Beatitudes. Especially at this time of crisis, Jesus’ words take on even greater importance. Pope Francis, in his 2018 apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, told us, “Jesus explained with great simplicity what it means to be holy when he gave us the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are like a Christian’s identity card. So if anyone asks: ‘What must one 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.”
• How are we called to live, and help others to live, as Jesus would during these time?
  • Jesus calls blessed the poor in spirit whose treasure is God. This is different from a spirit of entitlement, a spirit of privilege, a spirit of acquisitiveness.
  • Jesus called blessed those who mourn, who are so compassionate that they weep over others misfortune, promising that they will be consoled. This is a time in which we’re called to mourn over the injustice blacks have had to endure, to mourn over the death of George Floyd and others killed by brutality of police officers who have ceased to protect and serve, to mourn over the diabolical destruction visited upon so many businesses, vehicles, and lives by those taking advantage of the protests to harm others or for personal gain.
  • Jesus calls blessed those who are meek, who have a strength that they realize courageously they don’t have to put on display, to flex their muscles or show their force, to retaliate at every provocation. Jesus promises they will inherit the earth. They don’t have to seize it, or steal it.
  • Jesus says we’re blessed when we hunger and thirst for righteousness, which first and foremost means being right with God, but also includes being right with others. Justice is a virtue for which we should strive. But we must strive for justice with justice, with holiness, remaining right with God. Jesus promises those who do will be satisfied.
  • Jesus calls blessed the merciful, who don’t seek revenge, but who imitate him in asking God the Father to forgive those who do evil because they don’t know what they’re doing. These people, Jesus says, will receive mercy from God, because the measure with which we measure is measured back to us.
  • Jesus calls blessed the pure of heart, because they will see God. The chief breakdown in the evil we have been witnessing is the failure to see God in others, a blindness that allows us to label and categorize others, to strip them of their divinely given dignity, to dehumanize them. A heart purified of sin loves others more and more with the love of God.
  • Jesus calls blessed the peacemakers, those who seek to heal rather than expand or exploit divisions. They will be called children of God like Jesus, who came to reconcile all things in himself. During a time of crisis, real leaders are peacemakers, they try to bring God’s children together in a way united with justice. Peace and justice always go together.
  • Finally Jesus calls blessed those who suffer on account of their relationship with him, who are persecuted, insulted, and calumniated. These, he says, are like the prophets who have suffered before them for the truth and ultimately like Jesus would. They will have great reward in heaven because of their participation in his own sufferings, in his own peacemaking, in his own meekness, hunger for righteousness, mourning and spiritual poverty.
• None of these states seems blessed on earth to those who think might makes right, who live according to the flesh. They indicate things opposite to the path many in the world take. But Jesus lived all of them and is asking us to align our lives with the state of blessedness in this world, the state that allows us to enter much more into God’s life, mind and ways.
• The Prophet Elijah is one who did. He was persecuted for the sake of righteousness and multiple times needed to flee, as God instructed him to do in today’s first reading. But it was there that he was able to become poor in spirit, being fed by the water of the Wadi Cherith and eating the meager portions brought to him by ravens.
• To help us to become blessed like Jesus, God gives us something greater than what he provided Elijah. He gives us his son’s Body as our meat and his Blood as our drink, to strengthen us for a task even greater than that given to Elijah, to enflesh Christ’s own way of life in the Beatitudes and to show the world how to live.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading 1
1 KGS 17:1-6

Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab:
“As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve,
during these years there shall be no dew or rain except at my word.”
The LORD then said to Elijah:
“Leave here, go east
and hide in the Wadi Cherith, east of the Jordan.
You shall drink of the stream,
and I have commanded ravens to feed you there.”
So he left and did as the LORD had commanded.
He went and remained by the Wadi Cherith, east of the Jordan.
Ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning,
and bread and meat in the evening,
and he drank from the stream.

Responsorial Psalm
PS 121:1BC-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8

R. (see 2) Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
I lift up my eyes toward the mountains;
whence shall help come to me?
My help is from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
R. Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
May he not suffer your foot to slip;
may he slumber not who guards you:
Indeed he neither slumbers nor sleeps,
the guardian of Israel.
R. Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
The LORD is your guardian; the LORD is your shade;
he is beside you at your right hand.
The sun shall not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
R. Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
The LORD will guard you from all evil;
he will guard your life.
The LORD will guard your coming and your going,
both now and forever.
R. Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

Gospel
MT 5:1-12

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain,
and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him.
He began to teach them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you
and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.
Rejoice and be glad,
for your reward will be great in heaven.
Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

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