Almost exactly eleven years ago, my grandmother passed away; she would have turned one hundred years old just ten days ago. When she died, I travelled to my hometown to attend her funeral. As we were getting ready to walk to the chapel for the Requiem Mass, the parish priest suddenly asked me to deliver a sermon. We need to pause the story here for a moment. Typically, what you get from me at Sunday Mass is the result of a week of thinking and meditating on the Sunday readings, sometimes coupled with additional research and study. This process culminates in two to four hours of writing, as I distil everything into a 5 to 7-minute sermon short enough for you to survive. So, when a fellow priest asks me to “say something” just before Mass, I usually decline politely. However, at my grandmother’s funeral, there was neither time nor space to argue. The reading was the same passage from the Gospel we have just heard: the Beatitudes. After reading it at the Requiem Mass, I began my impromptu sermon by describing the text as a depiction of Christian perfection. Then I said, “My grandmother wasn’t like that.” A couple of notes before we continue the story. First, in Polish tradition, one speaks of the deceased well, or not at all. Second, my grandmother was the most important person in my life, second only to my mother, who is her daughter. She was a matriarch, well-respected and loved in her local community. So, there was a collective sharp intake of breath and gasps from the congregation when I said, “My grandmother wasn’t like that; she wasn’t the Beatitudes exemplified.” I clearly showed my ingratitude. Or did I?
One of the most common mistakes and misunderstandings about the Christian faith and its ethos, as presented in the New Testament and the Gospels in particular, is that it’s a kind of description of where the believers stand right here, right now. Consequently, any shortcomings and failures to live up to those high standards either disqualify us as Christians or disprove our beliefs, or both; a commonly used line of attack by the opponents of the faith. Sometimes we ourselves fall into such a trap and are tempted to give up trying to live up to it because of our repeated failings. However, the Christian faith and its ethics don’t work like that; if they did, there would be no hope for us because of our predilection to selfishness and even evil. Counteracting such instinctive, deeply rooted attitudes requires constant effort and training ourselves in goodness. Consequently, the high ethical demands of the gospel are challenges we take upon ourselves, or an ideal we aim to eventually achieve, as illustrated by today’s first reading’s opening line: “Seek the Lord, […]; seek righteousness; seek humility.”
It wasn’t a new concept; it was a continuation and development. In his Gospel, St Matthew presented Jesus as the new Moses. He did so in many ways, one of which was the composition of his narrative, particularly evident in Jesus’ first major speech, the Sermon on the Mount, of which the Beatitudes are the opening part. Like Moses on Mount Horeb, who gave Israel the foundational Ten Commandments, Jesus on the mount laid down principles for the new way. Like Moses, who expanded the Ten Commandments by providing more specific everyday applications in his detailed law, Jesus did so in the following part of his speech. The main difference between Moses and Jesus was that the former prescribed the law mainly in a negative manner, as in “you shall not kill, you shall not steal”, and so on. In other words, Moses set the boundaries that must not be crossed. Jesus’ approach was affirmative, which we could describe as “aim ever higher, sky is the limit.” Jesus didn’t reject the law of Moses but built on the foundations he had laid, as indicated by a phrase repeated a number of times by Jesus in his sermon: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder […].’ But I tell you…” followed by a description of much higher standards. We will hear more of that in two weeks’ time at the Sunday Mass.
The Beatitudes address various forms of adversity we might face in our lives; not all at the same time, and not necessarily all in the course of one’s life. The list of adversities isn’t obviously exhaustive or complete. The passage offers an adaptable pattern that can be applied to any difficult situation we face. Each sentence begins with a challenge that contradicts worldly standards, such as “Blessed are the poor in spirit” or “Blessed are the merciful”, followed by a promise of reward or fulfilment: “they shall be satisfied.” The main message of the Beatitudes is to embrace life’s adversities as challenges, opportunities to grow in wisdom, experience and stature, not as insurmountable obstacles in our way of life. Having rejected Christianity and its attitude towards life, our society struggles against the odds, as we are no longer equipped to deal with difficulties. The widely publicised mental health epidemic has many complex causes, but certainly one of them is the bubblewrap upbringing. A stress-free childhood can lead to a stressful adulthood without the mental tools, knowledge, experience and resilience to cope.
My granny wasn’t the flawless exemplification of the Beatitudes; nobody is. Yet after living through her extremely challenging life, she came very close. God rest her soul.
Image by Francesco Nigro from Pixabay
