This morning’s Gospel reading is Matthew 5:1–12a:
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.”
What does it mean to be poor? We know what it means to be poor in a material sense, to be sure, and that was the largely shared experience of humanity when Jesus preached. Wealth remained concentrated almost exclusively to ruling elites; a small class of tradesman eked out livings for themselves, but most families survived as serfs or subsistence-level agrarians. Only in recent centuries have living and working standards changed significantly — and not for everyone, either.
The Bible speaks repeatedly of the poor and disadvantaged, in both the New and Old Testaments. The Lord calls us to care for the poor, the widowed, the infirm, almost from the beginning of time. Jesus came to preach to the poor and to lift them up, a point He also emphasizes throughout His ministry and not just in the Beatitudes. Those exhortations are clearly meant literally, as a command to care for the less fortunate and treat them as we would our own family in assuring that their needs are met.
But what does it mean to be “poor in spirit”? To “mourn”? To be “meek”?
A poverty of spirit does not mean a lack of spirit, as a material poverty would indicate a lack of material goods. Nor does mourning require a grievous loss before becoming blessed, and being meek is not the same thing as being utterly helpless — even though those are all the ways in which we use those terms in a secular sense.
What they mean — and why Jesus reflects on them as blessings — is that people with these attributes have come to an understanding of their relationship with the Lord. They are blessed not because of poverty itself, but because they recognize that the Lord has created everything and we are merely blessed with its stewardship for His purposes.
Paul makes that clear in his first letter to the Corinthians. In our second reading, Paul emphasizes the role that the meek and the poor play in shaming the supposed rich and wise of this world, and why the former are blessed:
Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God. It is due to him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord.”
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In the Beatitudes, Jesus lays out in almost poetic perfection the way in which we come to the Lord. It is not through delusions of grandeur, power, or intellect. It is in recognizing the true nature of the created to the Creator. It is not even that we make ourselves spiritually poor; it’s that we recognize and acknowledge our spiritual poverty, and express it through mourning over our sins and pretensions of power and glory.
Even meekness is a recognition of the reality of the created to the Creator. What is meekness? It is not weakness, but strength abated for a purpose. We are called not to exploit our neighbors and covet what they have, even if — and perhaps especially if — we have the power to do so. Willfully abating that power and redirecting it to assist others is the form of meekness that Jesus calls “blessed” in the Beatitudes.
How do we know this? Jesus Himself models the Beatitudes throughout His ministry. Despite His great authority as the Word of God and His Son, Jesus constantly reminds His disciples that the Father has all authority. Jesus constantly mourns for the sins of the world, weeping over Jerusalem regarding this issue.
As for meekness, Jesus models that from His conception. Despite kingly authority over Creation, Jesus comes to us as a helpless baby. Despite His divine nature, Jesus grows up as a relatively obscure member of a poor family under Roman occupation. Rather than seek temple authority, Jesus learns a trade from his father and ekes out a living before launching His mission. Most importantly, despite raising Lazarus from the dead and others from near-death, Jesus willingly allows Himself to be brutally killed by Roman and temple authorities — as a sacrifice for the salvation of all who choose to follow Him.
It is this recognition of our proper relationship to the Creator that unlocks the wisdom of scripture. It is not the acquisition of spiritual poverty but a recognition of it that allows us to become blessed with His grace and take a step toward salvation. That allows us to mourn our sinfulness, and to repent by directing what we do have and can do to His service, an act of meekness and not weakness to benefit our brothers and sisters within Creation.
All we need to do is follow Jesus, and He will lead us home.
The front page image is a detail from “Sermon on the Mount” by Cosimo Rosselli, 1481-2. On display in the Sistine Chapel. Via Wikimedia Commons.
“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.
