The Gospel for this Sunday is from Matthew 5:1-12, and it is a famous section of the Sermon on the Mount called the Beatitudes. Beatitude means blessed, and these sayings describe people blessed by God. There is an irony to some of the sayings because they do not describe situations that many people consider positive. They include meekness, mourning, and persecution.
One way of looking at the Beatitudes is to see them as a two-fold description of life blessed by God. First, there is a sense in which these blessings apply to Jesus Himself. During His life on earth, He manifests His divine glory in the kinds of situations described here. He follows a simple, lowly, and humble way of life. He pursues true righteousness and offers true peace. He is saddened by the pervasiveness of disease, sin, and death in the world. He is innocent but suffers persecution, even to death on the cross.
Secondly, by His redeeming work, Jesus makes it possible for His disciples to share in the same kinds of blessedness. Through God's grace, these same humble states of life can become ways of being truly happy in faith. Knowing and trusting God's work in Christ, we become truly blessed in all kinds of lowly or painful circumstances. Such blessedness is not some superficial happiness, but by divine grace, it is a real and deeply spiritual contentment.
No comments:
Post a Comment