4th.
Sunday (Year A)
(Zephaniah 2:3;
3:12-13; 1st. Corinthians 1:26-31; Matthew 5:1-12)
The
Sermon on the Mount is indeed a compendium of the Good News brought by Christ
our Saviour to promote ‘glory to God in the highest’ and bring ‘peace on earth
for men of good will’, and we are guided to approach it from the point of view
of today’s accompanying readings from the prophet Zephaniah and St. Paul in his
first letter to the Church he founded in Corinth.
Our
reading from the prophecy of Zephaniah started with the words:
Seek
the LORD, all you humble of the earth, who have observed His law; seek justice,
seek humility; perhaps you may be sheltered on the day of the LORD’S anger.
Note
the word ‘justice’ in our Catholic translation (aka ‘integrity’); it translates
quite literally the Latin (New Vulgate) ‘iustitiam’, but unfortunately leaves
itself open to misuse by self-promoters who are so frequently to be heard these
days saying they want ‘justice’, especially when crying out against
authorities! For that reason, I prefer
to put before you a more widespread translation of the verse I have quoted,
which, instead of ‘justice’ uses the word ‘righteousness’ which can only mean
‘God’s righteousness’:
Seek
the LORD, all in the land who live humbly, obeying His laws; seek
righteousness, seek humility.
People
of God, observe how wisely, how lovingly, Mother Church tries to lead us to a
true and fruitful understanding of Jesus in the Scriptures! The teaching of these two readings from
Zephaniah and St. Paul are essential if we are to rightly understand and try to
live Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. Our
human pride, self-esteem, self-integrity, so blind us at times that we
are rendered unable to clearly recognize and distinguish what is true and what is false, what is real and what is
illusory, what is from us and what is of God.
A
worldly man cannot understand what he regards as the weakness of those who do
not fight for power, the indecisiveness of those who are unwilling to condemn, the
flabbyness of those who, in order to preserve peace, are loath to speak ill of
others. And such a person is bound to
be equally disgusted with what he would regard as the insipid and servile
attitude of those whom the prophet so lovingly mentioned in our first reading:
The
remnant of Israel will do no wrong and tell no lies, nor will a deceitful
tongue be found in their mouths.
However,
revolting above all for such proud lovers and promoters of this world and its
standards, are those words of Jesus in the final Beatitude:
Blessed
are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against
you falsely for My sake.
For
today’s worldlings those are not mysterious words but utterly ridiculous words
depicting a truly despicable attitude. And that is an attitude most surprisingly
exemplified (I trust unintentionally) last week-end in a well-known Catholic
periodical by a doctoral student of theology (!!): “The Gospel, in flagrant
defiance of such a reasonable course of (Buddhist) treatment, makes us more
susceptible to suffering. Taking Christ
as our example, the holy response to situations of loss and agony is quite
simply to suffer: to fall upon the ground and weep, to beg for deliverance, to
sweat drops of blood.”(!!!) However,
there would seem to be something in her human heart better than what is in her
student’s head, for she ends up by writing,
”But something in me knows that suffering is a truthful response to this
world. So I am not a Buddhist.”
For
us, however, those words of Jesus are mysterious words of the utmost moment to
which we must give some special attention.
‘Blessed
are you when they … ‘ Who are they?
Up to now Jesus has spoken about ‘those who mourn’, ‘the
meek’, ‘those who hunger and thirst for righteousness’, ‘the
merciful’, ‘the peacemakers’, ‘those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness’ …. But, then, all
of a sudden, He speaks of they who
do hateful things:
Blessed are you when they
insult, revile, and persecute you.
Who,
I ask again, are they? Surely Jesus must be referring to some,
perhaps many, who have already begun to show hostility and contempt to Himself
and, in some measure, to His disciples also.
And they are still with us today,
most confidently showing their faces and proclaiming their critical opinions of
and practical opposition to whatever makes us Catholic and Christian. You should appreciate, therefore, People of
God, why you, why we Catholics and Christians generally, are the butt of so
much ribaldry and the objects of so much antipathy and distaste, it is because
of Jesus:
Blessed
are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against
you falsely for My
sake.
The
opposition, mockery, and loathing shown to Christians and Catholics is not
because you are John ‘So-and-so’, Margaret ‘What’s-her-name’, Mr. ‘This’ or
Mrs. ‘That’, but simply and solely because you are a Catholic and/or a
Christian. In the world’s estimation,
you are -- as an individual -- lost in the fog of hatred for and contempt of
Christ; and that is why Jesus said ‘Blessed are you’ when such things happen,
because that is the sort of Catholic and Christian God has called you to be
and the world is now recognising you (let us pray, truthfully!) to be, that is,
totally Jesus’ …. Living in the Church which is His
beloved Spouse and supreme Witness, by His
own Body and Blood whereby He nourishes us and bestows His Holy Spirit upon us; proclaiming
and loving the Faith in the hope which His words have generated
within us; aspiring towards our only
Father and His Whose Kingdom is in Heaven and Whose lordship extends through all
the earth, and by Whose loving Providence countless brothers and sisters who
have already witnessed before us are awaiting and encouraging us in our
pilgrimage of testimony.
Blessed
are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against
you falsely for My sake.
For
all authentic disciples of Jesus, children of God and of Mother Church, who --
having abandoned the sordid garments and worldly aspirations of personal
integrity and self-satisfaction, popular approval and political correctness --
seek by prayer and obedience to put on instead the righteousness of Christ,
those words are, indeed, both eternal and true; words that lead us to confess
the truth about Jesus together with the very first disciples -- Peter and the
holy apostles -- who said:
Lord,
You alone have the words of life.
Yes dear Lord, sent
by Your Father into this world, You have become for us:
Wisdom
from God, as well as righteousness,
sanctification, and redemption, so that, as it is written, “ Whoever
boasts, should boast in the Lord.”
And we do indeed ‘boast in the Lord’ because, in the
words of the Psalmist:
The salvation of the just comes from the Lord.
The salvation of the just comes from the Lord.
Our Blessed Lord took upon Himself the sins of the
world to save the whole of mankind from sin in all its ramifications and
manifestations, and ultimately from eternal death. Under such a burden, and deliberately
emptying Himself of all forms of glory for our sake, He Himself had to: ‘fall
upon the ground in the garden of Gethsemane and weep, to beg for deliverance,
to sweat drops of blood’ (so mockingly recalled by our student writer)
precisely because He was suffering for all in whatever need, so that even among those reduced to the profoundest depths
of human suffering and humiliation, there might be none so low or so
desperately lonely that they could not turn to Him for understanding,
forgiveness, and redemption. He endured that for love of us, so that we,
His most gratefully proud disciples might be able to better bear our own
sufferings and trials in the power bestowed upon us by His Gift of the Spirit
Who, many centuries before, inspired the psalmist to prepare and sing for us:
Trust in the LORD and do good that you may dwell in
the land and live secure. Find your delight in the LORD Who will give you your
heart’s desire.
Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him and He will
act. He will make justice dawn for you
like the light, bright as the noonday shall be your vindication.
By the LORD are the steps of a man made firm, and He
approves his way. Though he fall, he does not lie prostrate, for the
hand of the LORD sustains him.
The salvation of the just is from the LORD; He is
their refuge in time of distress. The
LORD helps and delivers them, He delivers them from the wicked and saves them,
because they take refuge in Him. (cf. Psalm 37)
