Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
First Reading: Jeremiah 17:5-8
Responsorial: Psalm 1:1-6
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20
Gospel: Luke 6: 17, 20-26
"Blessed are you who are poor."
"Blessed are you who are now hungry."
So says Jesus in what is called "The Sermon on the Plain," a summary of his most basic and most demanding teachings, in the Gospel of Luke.
If being poor and hungry is so much to be desired, why do our parishes collect and distribute food, or provide clothes from their thrift shops, or help with rent payments? Why do we have Catholic Charities and the St. Vincent de Paul Society? What is the national Campaign for Human Development doing, if its purpose is to help people organize and educate to overcome poverty? Are Catholic Relief Services just interfering with opportunities for spiritual growth when they feed, clothe and provide shelter for refugees in all parts of the world?
To look at it another way, if many of the more or less well-off people that I have come to know over the years were poor, they wouldn't have the resources to help those in need, as they generously do now.
The passage from the prophet, Jeremiah, helps us to understand what's going on. Jeremiah says, "Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings… whose heart turns away from the Lord."
"Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is in the Lord."
Those who have nothing realize how fragile their world is. Without help from someone, tomorrow they and their children starve. Without help from someone, they have no tarpaulin over their heads to protect them from the sun or tent to provide some relief from the cold. They have no illusions about their own power and self-sufficiency. They may not necessarily believe in God, but they surely do recognize that they are dependent on others.
On the other hand, those who have all they need and more, can settle into believing that their job or their investments or their second home or their hefty bank accounts are what life really stands on. They have built their own security carefully, and they may never look further. They can be blind to a life and a world beyond their own arrangements, and indeed beyond this world. Jeremiah describes such persons as barren bushes in the desert, standing in lava waste, a salt and empty earth.
Sometimes we witness how powerful the supposedly powerless can be. Mother Teresa, less than five feet tall and with none of the resources that the world considers essential, once stopped a battle. India and Pakistan were involved in one of their border wars. Mother Teresa needed to come to the area to carry on her work. For a brief time, both sides called a cease-fire so that her helicopter could land, so great was the respect for this powerless woman.
In 1219, St. Francis of Assisi, armed only with his simplicity and holiness, determined to visit the Sultan of Egypt, even though a war was waging between Crusaders and Muslims. Francis passed through the battle lines and so impressed the Muslim sultan that he was allowed to spend several days unharmed and speaking of his faith — another example of the strange power of powerlessness.
Of course, it doesn't work this way most of the time. The powerful regularly trample on the powerless, but there are occasions when trust in God and reliance on him triumph over the arsenal of power. Maybe sometimes we should try using persuasion and faith rather than power.
Jeremiah uses another image to get across what these readings are about. The one who trusts in the Lord "is like a tree planted beside the waters… it fears not the heat when it comes; its leaves stay green; in the year of drought, it… still bears fruit." The issue is about where we put down our roots. The tree must flourish if we are to have all that is needed for human life with dignity, but the tree will be truly healthy only if its roots reach deeply into faith and trust in God.
For those of us who may not be poor but not rich either, there is an added consolation. When we stand before God, we won't have so much explaining to do about how we used the million-dollar Christmas bonus or the hundred-million-dollar golden parachute.
