4th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Zep 2:3; 3:12-13
Second Reading: 1 Cor 1:26-31
Gospel Reading: Mt 5:1-12a
God made us with a natural desire for happiness, which only he can satisfy. In fact, he himself is its object: he made us for himself.
God offers us this happiness as an utterly free gift. Accordingly, we call it beatitude, from the Latin beatus, translated “blessed.”
In this Sunday’s Gospel Reading, Jesus proclaims the beatitudes, so called because each begins with “blessed.” To understand them, we must know what “blessed” means.
First, “bless” can mean “praise, extol, adore, call holy,” as in the psalm: “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” Second, it can mean “favour,” as in “May God have pity on us and bless us.” Third, it can mean “invoke God’s favour upon,” as when we ask a priest to bless a Rosary.
In each sense, the past participle is “blessed.” Like all such words, it used to have two syllables: bless-èd. In everyday English, this pronunciation was largely abandoned in the 16th century, but it is still common in prayers, like the old forms of “you” and “your” – ”thou,” “thee,” and “thy.”
The title “blessèd,” given to “the blessèd Virgin Mary” and to holy people before canonization, used to mean “favoured.” Today, however, it usually means “holy, revered, consecrated.” For example, we sing “Blessèd are you, holy are you,” as though “blessèd” and “holy” are synonymous.
When “blessed” means “holy,” we give it two syllables.
However, Mary was calling herself “favoured” – not “holy” – when she said, “All ages to come shall call me blessed,” for she immediately explained, “God, who is mighty, has done great things for me.” Similarly, Elizabeth meant “favoured” when she said, “Blessed are you among women.”
When “blessed” means “favoured,” we give it only one syllable and often spell it “blest.”
In the “beatitudes,” “blessed” means “blest.” For example, when Jesus said, “Blest are they who mourn,” he was calling them favoured, not holy.
The beatitudes proclaim paradoxes, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI explains. If you are poor, sad, persecuted, insulted, or slandered, the world calls you unfortunate, but you should consider yourself blest. If you are meek, merciful, or peaceable, the world calls you weak, timid, or lazy, but you should consider yourself blest. If you are hungry for righteousness or single-hearted in your devotion to God, the world calls you unrealistic and impractical, but you should consider yourself blest.
For example, the world says, “Happy are the rich.”
Not “all seek to be wealthy,” but “all bow down before wealth,” St. John Henry Newman noted. “Wealth is that to which the multitude of men pay an instinctive homage.” At the sight of wealth they “feel an involuntary reverence and awe” resulting from “a belief that with wealth one can do anything.”
No, says Jesus: “the poor in spirit” are the ones who are blest.
The world says, “Happy are the celebrities.”
Notoriety, or “making a noise in the world, has come to be considered a great good in itself, and a ground of veneration,” Newman said. Some people will even commit a crime in order to gratify the “desire of being talked about.”
No, says Jesus: “the meek” are the ones who are blest.
When we see things “in the right perspective” – that is, “in terms of God’s values” – the world’s standards “are turned upside down,” says Pope Benedict.
The beatitudes are not commands, he notes. However, by pointing to our ultimate beatitude, they do confront us with “decisive moral choices,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church: not between good and evil, but between the greatest good, God, and the lesser goods he has created.
They assert that beatitude is not found in riches, fame, power, science, art, technology, or anything created. Implicitly, therefore, they invite us to “purify our hearts” of lower instincts and seek God above everything else.
They are “directions for finding the right path,” which we each follow according to our own way of life.
Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English, with new insights in both print and YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Father is also teaching the course in person on Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre (4885 Saint John Paul II Way, 33rd Avenue and Willow Street, Vancouver) and on Mondays from 10 a.m. to noon in St. Anthony’s Church Hall, 2347 Inglewood Avenue, West Vancouver. Next week’s topic is “Baptism and Confirmation.”