What is it that you feel you need?  It could be a job, food, medication, health care, someone to listen to me, a new house, a car, a competent accountant, a visa, forgiveness, and the list goes on.  Depending on whom and under what circumstances this question is asked, the answers will vary greatly.  I wonder how many of our needs are real needs, or simply desires that may be formed by perceptions that flow from a cultural, religious, or societal mindset.  This does not mean that these perceptions are automatically “bad” or “wrong,” but it does mean that they may need to be looked at or scrutinized under another light.

Unfortunately, we many times tend to see and hear things only within the context of our own “group” whether it be ethnic, religious, political, economic, etc.  There is no way around this, but it can be disastrous what happens when these perceptions become exaggerated to the extent that fear becomes manifest.  Then we have a situation where needs are based upon fears that may not be real at all.  Fear has been the culprit of some of the most devastating experiences that we have witnessed in history, e.g., all the disputes that have come about as the result of imperialism and the fear of an “other” that is different, or perceived as such, to the extent that they are dangerous.  When we perceive something as dangerous, we go into protection mode.  As we are witnessing today, there are many forces in our world that further traffic this fear, and we fall further prey to this divisive nature of fear.  How can we find any hope in this situation?  How can we begin to see or perceive a way out or even through this situation so that we can even consider a space where perceived oppositions can come together and we can listen without prejudice?

Today’s Gospel message, which includes the well-known beatitudes, speaks to this I believe (MT 5: 1-12a).

“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.”

Jesus has climbed a mountain in Matthew’s Gospel to elaborate on what will allow us to be “blessed.”  Being blessed is usually associated with contentment, happiness, and indeed fearlessness.  If we just take the very first beatitude, I think we can discover a key element from which all the others flow.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  Jesus does not seem to be talking about physical poverty here, but rather a “poverty in spirit,” that realizes the need we have for God – the idea that “I cannot do this on my own.  I cannot get through this life without support, sustenance, love.  I NEED God!”  This type of need is the most basic need that we all have – the need for companionship and support as we journey through life.  In some way, all the other beatitudes seem to flow from this.  Jesus is not affirming all these things that most of us seek to avoid, i.e., grief, insult, persecution and being falsely accused.  Instead, he may be trying to tell us how we can approach these life experience, and not just in ways of “getting through them,” but transforming them.

The beatitudes are a justice manifesto based in the recognition and embracing of this dependence on God, trusting God.  When we hear the beatitudes I think we miss a further or complimentary step.  How do we trust in God to provide all the real needs that we have – Love and Compassion?  We forget Who or Where we find Christ?  Yes, it’s in the Eucharist and the Scriptures and Tradition, but perhaps more fundamentally, as Paul says so many times, we find Christ in each other.  This is the true meaning of Incarnation.  We are the enfleshment of Christ.  So, could it be that the way in which we will be blessed is to realize our utter dependence on God, and that means our utter interdependence on one another?  This gives quite a twist to what we consider needs.

The translation here would be that…inasmuch as we need God, we need each other, because this is how God is coming to us.  This is why we say that God has a preferential option for the poor.  Because we are ALL poor, and we can only be enriched through one another.  Nothing else.  Everything else that we think can protect us is a myth (in the bad sense) because when we trust in anything else or try to fulfill our human needs outside of the community of Christ (all of us), we are operating out a perceived fear that is not real, but its effects are always devastating.  We target each other and discriminate on who we let into our lives and who we don’t.  We label those who seem to threaten us and we deny God!  In this, we fail to respond in mercy and compassion to each other and in doing so we suffer from self-inflicted wounds.  We are hurting ourselves.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could really see each other as Christ?  Then wouldn’t we be blessed or content?  Then we could be merciful because Mercy is already here.  Then we would be comforted because we are allowing someone to comfort us.  The sermon on the mount in today’s Gospel describes an environment – the kingdom of heaven. This “kingdom” is a shared engagement with each other, where we can only be Human by relying on each other, by loving each other (the meaning of being the Body of Christ).  That is the TOTAL context for a life IN God.  The dualistic pairings can be healed in this way.  Fear-based targeting, exclusion and violence fall away to the community of Mercy, Humility and Compassion which is God’s world for us.

But what would this look like?  Thomas Merton, the great Trappist spirituality master, describes this community of Mercy as our intentional loving those who are helpless who can do nothing for themselves, and ALSO receiving love from them, realizing our own helplessness.  This is the community of the needy, what Jesus is calling the Poor in Spirit.  This is what can cut through the pride of individualism with its devastating shadow of fear, and grant us that space where we can come together and listen without prejudice because we have nothing to lose.

This is a tall order, so it seems, these beatitudes of solidarity.  In many ways, they fly in the face of our culture.  But we risk everything if we don’t begin to learn to see each other as the Body of Christ.  We need each other and our God needs us to realize and live this for the Kingdom of Heaven to flourish!

Peace

Thomas

The soul is the delicate yet durable cloth  woven and laced together in loving pattern  by the merciful strokes of God’s Passings…
    And the sheen of our soul is the ever-glowing  awareness we have of this sacred-stitched fabric.