Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven.
In the Beatitudes, Jesus takes great swaths of humanity and examines the blessings and woes that life brings us. I can’t help thinking that in my own experience, I am the blessed and I am the one to whom Jesus says, “Woe.” Out there, far from what I know, is poverty and hunger, despair, and persecution. Instead, I have known comfort, have had good food, have laughed, and been loved. By comparison to world standards, I am rich, I am filled, I laugh, and I have known people who speak well of me. How, then, do I live the Beatitudes if this is the case? At times, I am spiritually impoverished, hungry for God’s word and his guidance, and have wept for loss of what is or what once was. Even more, people I know do in fact hate me for what I profess about my faith.
God, help me learn to understand and live the Beatitudes. If I am poor, there are others who are poorer; if I am hungry for you, there are others hungrier; if I weep, how many others weep for pain that seems to see no end? And in my time others have died because of your name. Help me recognize the way of the Beatitudes in everyday life. What can I bring when opportunity comes—most often and mostly within my own family—but the spirit of love and healing for the poor, the hungry, and the downtrodden? If I fail to do this in my family, what hope do I have of helping the marginalized made invisible, those starving to death, the truly desperate, and those physically persecuted for the faith? The Beatitudes take in the small and the great and give great leeway in taking action out of love, encompassing everyday aches and pains—little discomforts—and by the same means, extreme anguish and pain.
God, I know you hear me. I am hungry for your word and your presence. I think by the Beatitudes you are teaching me that I am poor anywhere I go if you are not present, that I am hungry in everything and that nothing satisfies except you, that all is empty frivolity unless you are in it, that to be excluded for your name’s sake is to dwell in your shelter and abide in your shadow. Teach me, Lord, to know your peace.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
