Fr. Michael Williams

I think we would all recognise that there is a distinction between the words happy and blessed. So rather than say, ‘How happy are you poor…Happy you who are hungry… Happy you who weep’. It is probably more correct to say, ‘‘How blessed are you poor…blessed you who are hungry…blessed you who weep’. I believe the new translations of the Bible, which we will use at Mass in the near future will rectify this problem.

It is important to make this point because one of the strong themes in St Luke’s gospel is the question, ‘What makes somebody blessed’? In the passage from St Luke’s gospel today, Jesus says they are blessed ‘who are poor…who are hungry now…and who weep now’, and those who are persecuted because of their commitment to Christ. Our Lord goes on to say, ‘Alas for you rich now…for you who have your fill now…for you who laugh now’ and those who the world speaks well of.

On the surface Our Lord’s teaching seems baffling here. But with Christ’s teaching we need to go deeper. In last week’s gospel Jesus told Simon ‘to put out into the deep’. With the teachings of Jesus and His Church we always need to look at the deeper meanings, and not remain just on the surface level.

Jesus is outlining the two ways to understand life: either we live ‘for the Kingdom of God’, living prayerfully and simply; in solidarity with the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and those persecuted ‘on account of the Son of Man’. This is the way to blessedness.

The other way to understand life is to live ‘for one’s own consolation’, living for riches and endless laughter, and wanting to be praised by all. That’s the road to Hell.

The prophet Jeremiah also takes up this theme of blessing and curse when he tells us, ‘the Lord says this: “A curse on the man who puts his trust in man, who relies on things of flesh…[but]…a blessing on the man who puts his trust in the Lord, with the Lord for his hope”’.

Lent, which begins on Wednesday, is a time to detach ourselves from our creaturely comforts and attach ourselves more to the Lord, like Jeremiah counsels us to.

In effect Lent is an opportunity to deepen our commitment to the ways of blessedness; it is an opportunity to rely more on God and less on our earthly attachments. So rather than choose the ways of the world, which are often driven by selfishness, let’s choose the way of the Kingdom of God, which is way of blessedness; a blessedness which will ultimately be vindicated in Christ’s Resurrection from the dead, which opens the way to eternal life, which is the definitive state of blessedness.