6^th Sunday in O.T. (C); 02-16-2025

Jer 17:5-8.  Ps 1.  1 Cor 15:12,16-20.  Lk 6:17,20-26

Deacon Jim McFadden

            What does it mean to be happy?  What does it mean to be blessed.   How can they be found?  These are ground-floor, basic the ‘rubber hitting the road’ questions.  If we get them wrong, then we’ve assigned ourselves to a miserable, unfulfilled life.  While these questions are perennial, in our 21^{st century}  American situation, the answer seems to be that happiness consists in having the goods of the world—the more the better.  Commercial advertising is based on the premise that the way I acquire value is to obtain  stuff that lies outside myself.  It’s akin the voracious plant in the Little Shop of Horrors who demands “Feed me, feed me!”

            Today’s readings, especially the Gospel from Luke offers an alternative contrary view and raises the question of true happiness.  In it Jesus challenges our easy assumptions that happiness is acquired through money and possessions, status and prestige, control and dominative power, and self-indulgent, hedonistic pleasure.  Jesus knows that true happiness consists not in having the goods of the world, but being in right relationship with God.  Being made in the image of God, who is Love, we are most human we are in love with God and our brothers and sisters.  Money, fame, power, and pleasure (the 4 Ps) cannot bring us happiness because they simply can’t love us.  So, Jesus insists that what can make us truly happy and really blessed is being in a singular relationship with God and living in His Kingdom.  That means our life is no longer about us, but is about God who is due our total commitment and surrender.  We move from having the goods of the world to being in right relationship with God.  Such a conversion will have a profound impact on how we live our life and how we relate to others.

            The Beatitudes describe what it is like to live a happy life, a freed life, a united life.  Luke arranges them into four beatitudes and four admonitions: affirmations and challenges.  Both open our eyes and let us look into our world through His gaze, beyond the superficial, beyond the surface, and teach us to discern our human experience from a faith perspective.

            Jesus goes way beyond conventional wisdom of our society by proclaiming the poor, the hungry, the suffering, and the persecuted—everyone we want to avoid!—they are blessed.  More to it, he admonishes those who have got it made—those who are rich, satisfied, who laugh and are praised by the people.  What’s behind this great Reversal of Values?  Put simply, God is close to those who suffer, and intercedes to free them from their oppression and their oppressors.  In a similar vein, the “woe to you” addresses those who are doing well today, and  has the purpose of “waking” them up from their dangerous deceit of egotism and individuality, thus opening them to the dynamic of love shared between persons. 

            We’re only going to make this conversion if we have a profound sense of faith which means we put our trust   completely in the Lord and not the goods of the world.  It is about detaching ourselves from contemporary, worldly idols in order to open our hearts to the One, true, and living God.  He alone can give our life that fulness and completeness that we so deeply desire because he is Being itself: Yahweh— the great I AM!  And, here we come to a basic choice: our lives are either about God or about ourselves.  It is so easy to slip unwittingly into sinning against the first Commandment: namely, idolatry, substituting God with an idol.  How do we know that we are under the spell of idolatry?  What is it that you are most afraid to lose?  That attachment is most likely your idol.

            That is why Jesus opens our eyes to reality as he sees it.  We are called to happiness, to be blessed, and we become so to the measure that we “love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Dt 6:4b).  When we place ourselves on the side of God, of his Kingdom, on the side that is not transitory, finite, and ephemeral, then we are moving in the direction of eternal life.  We are happy when we recognize that we are radically dependent upon God, which is why it’s so important that we say everyday:  “Lord, I need you.”  And, if we align ourselves to God, we will love and serve those whom God loves: we will be close to the poor, the suffering, and the hungry.  Although we may be fortunate to possess worldly goods, we experience joy when we share them with others.  We don’t idolize or sell our souls out to them, but we use them according to God’s purposes: for the Common Good.  Today, the liturgy invites us once again to examine our lives and to be truthful in our heart.

            People of God, if we live our lives dying to our False Self and God-substitutes, then we will be gradually raised to a new and transformed life.  As we begin to believe that Paschal Mystery is the template for genuine human existence, our lives will manifest that mystery.  Our belief that Christ has died and Christ is risen will be shown in the way we live in faith.  The challenge is to live and through our faith in the Risen Christ who actively dwells among and within us.  If we do, we will be happy and blessed.  

            May Our Lady, the first disciple of the Lord, help us live as open and joyful disciples.  Amen.

Reflection Questions:

1. How do you define happiness?
2. For Jesus, the poor, the hungry, the suffering, and the persecuted, they are blessed.  Why’s that the case?
3.  We are happy when we recognize that we are radically dependent upon God.  Do you live from that perspective in your ordinary experience?