Reflection for the 6th Week in Ordinary Time

        Jesus always spoke from experience. So when he said that the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful, and the persecuted were blessed, he was not just presenting a fanciful or idealistic set of dreams.  He was speaking out of experience about what it was like to have his life shaped by God’s overflowing love. Jesus knew what it meant to be poor and yet have the kingdom of God as his inheritance.  He chose a life of simplicity because his heart was set on higher riches.  He chose to pray throughout the night and to fast for forty days and nights because he wanted God to fill him up.  Jesus so wanted to give people everything he had received from his Father that he openly mourned his disciples’ unbelief and Jerusalem’s rejection of him.   Finally, he knew that, like the prophets, he would be hated, reviled, and persecuted — not because he was obnoxious but because his words struck against the hardness of sin in the human heart.  But he could not keep from speaking out, so greatly did God’s love for his people compel him.

 

        If we take the words of Jesus seriously, then only the poor are really rich — the kingdom is theirs.  But there is more to this than one might think.  For only those who love God more than themselves would be empty enough — poor enough — to be filled with God’s kingdom.  Only those who follow God’s will rather than their own would be free enough to accept God’s kingdom.  The poor then are those who let go of themselves, and so they come to know that they can’t rely on their own strength alone to reach the kingdom.  They have to rely on God.

These attitudes aren’t always easy for us, but our relationship with God is blocked without them.  That’s why it is so important for us to pray that God will help us to make these attitudes our own.