Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:26-31
Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12
At many new steps in our life we have to make the roster. What ever team, group, band, job, etc that we are trying to join, they have expectations of what they are looking for and how you are expected to act once chosen.
I remember having to interview to be on camp staff at Life Teen Camp Covecrest back in 2004. This was before they had all of the missionary training they do now. I remember there being an application and a phone interview. I don't remember specifics but we were asked about our experience in ministry, our current faith life, our willingness to work with youth, do any and every job given to us, and to work as a team. Once you get there, you realize how important those expected characteristics are.
God calls all to himself, no matter what is in their past. There's nothing we can do to give ourselves salvation. We have to accept it. And once accepted there is a way we are expected to live. I think that's a large part of what the scriptures were talking about on Sunday.
In the second reading Paul is telling us that God does not choose his workers in the field like the world chooses. The world is usually looking for the strongest, bravest, fastest, most wealthy, etc. But God, he uses the ones people least expect to impact the world. I think the apostles and saints are perfect examples of this. The saints run the gamut of human experience. But, if they've been at the top of society they have often been taken down. If they've been rich, many times they've been made poor. If they have been rich and at the top they made themselves less important and served others. The apostles were not part of an elite class. They were fisherman and, as their peers saw it, scum of the earth tax collectors. Not learned men, religious leaders, people with power, but regular men that stumbled and put their feet in their mouths more often than not, yet spread the gospel so that Jesus' church could be what it is today.
In the Gospel Jesus gives us his Beatitudes. Some of them make sense, but it is the odd ones that I think are the most powerful and demand more of our attention. First off we have to begin with even though most translations begin each beatitude with "blessed" a better translation is "happy". And so the odd balls follow, "Happy are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the persecuted, and those who receive insult, persecution, and evil." Huh, happy are those people?
I like how Bishop Barron explains these in his Catholicism series. The main focus of these "negative" beatitudes, as he puts it, are their visions of detachment. If we are too attached to things, experiences to make us happy, we have no room for God to provide true happiness and joy.
-The poor in spirit are detached from possessions and wealth.
-Those who mourn are detached from thrill seeking and always having to be happy, finding the next fix.
-The meek are detached from control and power.
-The persecuted, insulted, etc, are detached from comfort and social appeal.
Think about it. If you are attached to any of these it is going to be hard to allow God to mould you, send you, teach you, much less look to him and others in your faith journey. Without the beatitudes I think we turn into our own pope. We become the type of people that hold others up to impossible non-empathetic, unsympathetic standards.
When St. Bernard of Clairvaux was asked what the 3 most important virtues were he replied, "Humility, humility, humility." Humility isn't thinking less of ourselves, it's thinking of ourselves less. At our high school retreat weekend on Jesus, we ended with a session called "The Choice". Once we know who Jesus wasn't, who he was, and what he calls us to, we must respond. And right off the bat we start thinking of how unworthy, gross, disgusting, etc, we are. And yes, we are unworthy, but he makes us worthy. Without him we are incapable but he makes us capable. It doesn't matter if we are the school bully or the bullied, if we've been abused or we are the abuser, if we struggle with our sexuality, drugs, alcohol, pornography, if we've broken ever commandment. If we are humble and know that God is all powerful, we have already been called and chosen, and that he wants and loves us no matter what is in our past, nothing can stop him from using us for his greater glory if we allow him.
If he could realize that even after what he did, enough to earn himself the nick name "the Nazi butcher", God loved him, what is holding us back?
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