4th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Perfection produces paradoxes because they create contradictions. Paradoxes are counter-cultural, anti-conventional. The paradox becomes apparent when life is anything but perfect. Following our own heart’s desires leads to the greatest sorrow and sadness, whereas following the heart of Christ leads to fulfillment, the perfection of our person. This is the great Christian paradox.
God’s ways are not ours and our ways deceive because our heart is “is incurable, and our wound is grievous” (Jer 30:12). Our hearts hurt and become hopeless as we face the wounds, especially when we suffer the wounds of another who refuses healing. Jesus, understanding our woundedness, reveals his heart, healing our wounds, embracing our sorrows, then unleashing upon us the power of the Beatitudes. These paradoxes unveil the mysteries of God and the way to a whole, healed, and perfect heart.
A perfect heart finds happiness not in the ways of the world, but in the way of Jesus. In his Sermon on the Mount, the pearl of his teaching, the Beatitudes, depicts his own heart. He affirms our sorrow and woe; yet uses our desperate hopefulness to heal. His healing reaching into the depths of our poverty and sorrow and converts our hearts. Hearts contrite yet hopeful become the pathways to beatitude. Beatitude wants perfect charity and our desire for beatitude allows God to place his heart into ours. The Catechism sums this up perfectly:
The Beatitudes depict the countenance of Jesus Christ and portray his charity. They express the vocation of the faithful associated with the glory of his Passion and Resurrection; they shed light on the actions and attitudes characteristic of the Christian life; they are the paradoxical promises that sustain hope in the midst of tribulations; they proclaim the blessings and rewards already secured, however dimly, for Christ’s disciples.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, # 1717
Our world lives by conventions, customs, and covenants. Wealth brings happiness. Charisma captivates. Politeness brings power. Tolerance offers peace. Understanding creates acceptance. Beauty brings opportunities. Calmness creates harmony. Diplomacy smooths over divisions.
These ways, as plausible and acceptable as they seem, are not God’s ways. In fact, these conventional beatitudes oppose God’s ways. They hide the heart of God and replace his Divine Beatitudes with human conventions that create false friendships. Although they seem attractive, even desirable, they reveal human wisdom not divine. They suit a horizontal space not a vertical trajectory.
God’s ways break with convention and custom with a radically different outlook. He wants a covenant, a relationship of the heart. He breaks through the customs and conventions that protect us from experiencing true intimacy. He wants to bless us with his presence, securing us in his heart. To do this, Jesus inverts earthly blessings and replaces them with the Divine Beatitudes.
The Divine Beatitudes unveil the paradoxical promises of the heavenly kingdom. These paradoxes contradict because wealth does not bring happiness, poverty does. Poor in spirit, better understood as dependency, longs for inter-dependency, not self-sufficiency. Humility embraces God allowing Him to improve our lives. Mourning captivates because we experience the raw pain and suffering of injustices and want comfort: comfort literally means with strength of another. God comforts us. God’s strength, not our strength, conquers the injustices in our lives because He is all-just. Meekness, not politeness but gentleness, creates power and position. Earthly power: retaliation, revenge, and vengeance, does not bring peace. Patient endurance does. Vengeance is mine says the Lord, not ours. Meekness allows God to act for He is gentle of heart and instead retaliating against the injustices, Jesus’ meekness teaches reconciliation. St. Francis de Sales describes the power of a meek and gentle heart when he states: Nothing is so powerful as gentleness and nothing so meek as true power.
Justice, being right with others, and righteousness, being right with God, reconciles us so we are not at war within ourselves nor with others. Righteousness and justice are not of this world. Our world bleeds with injustices, not only familial and spousal some of the most intense betrayals, but also economic, social, and sadly spiritual injustices. They cry out. God hears the cries of those who hunger and thirst for justice and answers, as the Psalmist declares. The LORD
Executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. . . . The way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
Ps 146:7-9
Tolerance is not mercy; mercy forgives an injustice inspiring repentance and reconciliation. Mercy expects a change of heart and only when hearts are changed for the better, does reconciliation takes place.
Beauty is not purity. It is merely external. Purity is internal. It is integrity of the heart. Those with integrity behold God’s heart. They see God and reveal God to the impure, the broken hearted, giving hope. The pure of heart, then prays for all, as the Psalmist says,
Blessed is the man to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
Ps 32:2
Peace, Shalom, comes from God infusing his will into ours securing harmony within our soul, despite the turmoil. Persecution creates divisions unless one embraces the injury and betrayal as a sign of honor and integrity standing up for Truth, as did Jesus.
Going against the desires of our heart, the Beatitudes reveal the heart of Jesus. Jesus’ heart has one desire, our eternal happiness, not earthly. Happiness is the sole goal of every person, of every action. But true happiness transcends earthly conventions. It contradicts human judgement revealing the beatitude of God’s thought.
The Beatitudes secure us in our weakness and woundedness. No longer do insecurities arise, reigning because of the struggles we face. The Beatitudes offer hope. Hope secures us when we face poverty, sadness, violence, corruption, and persecution. The Beatitudes expel the idolatries which incite revenge and retaliation and invite reconciliation. Love secures reconciliation. Love heals sinfulness. Love cancels the innumerable offenses because love bears all things, endures all injustice. Divine Love, the source of the Beatitudes, reveals a new law, a new way. It is the way of beatitude, rectifying the turmoil of our human emotions, reason, and choices.
The Beatitudes bless, giving us a fortune. This fortune is not silver and gold but peace and harmony. Reconciliation with our God, as Pope St. Clement explains, is the essence of the Beatitudes:
Happy are we, Beloved, if love enables us to live in harmony and in the observance of God’s commandments, for then it will also gain for us the remission of our sins.
St. Clement I, Pope, Letter to Corinthians; Tuesday Second Week, Ordinary Time
The Beatitudes, the paradoxical promises, offer freedom from sin. Free, the Spirit blesses us, with grace upon grace. Secured by divine Love, the Beatitudes produce rightful happiness. This happiness far exceeds any earthly blessing because we behold the author of all blessings, Jesus Christ. In communion with Christ, blessing upon blessing comes. It is as St. John says, the fulness of divine life dwelling within (John 1:16). Knowing how fortunate, happy, we are because our transgression is forgiven, our sin is covered, and our sorrows understood, the Father beholds us in the bosom of his heart.