Homily: 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

February 16, 2025

My dear brothers and sisters, the central theme of the liturgy of the word of today is on the beatitudes. These passages of the Sacred Scripture read today tell us where true and everlasting blessedness, happiness, grace, beauty and peace lie. The gospel reading from St Luke makes a list of behaviors of those that are indeed blessed: the poor who will inherit the kingdom of God, the hungry who will be filled, those who weep who will be comforted, those who are persecuted for God’s sake who would be rewarded in the kingdom of God. Luke contrasts these behaviors with the behaviors of those that would be cursed. In the Responsorial psalm, the psalmist pictures the one who trusts in the Lord, who does not follow the advice of the wicked or take the path of sinners as one who is truly blessed. A similar message is also contained in the first reading, the prophet Jeremiah prophesies an abundance of blessings that would follow those who place their trust in the Lord, on the opposite those who place their trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength would reap a harvest of curses.

In general, these gospel beatitudes are not a wonderful recipe for someone whose vision of life ends only in the worldly struggle, wellbeing and pleasure. Sometimes they look like bombshells, in the sense that they take the accepted worldly standards and turn them upside down. The people whom Jesus called happy, the world would call the wretched and the most miserable; and the people Jesus called the wretched, the world would call happy and the successful. Just imagine anyone saying, happy are the poor, and woe to the rich. To talk like that is to put an end to the world’s values altogether. So, the teaching on the beatitudes generally looks revolutionary in nature.

Where then lies the key for appropriating the message of the beatitudes in our lives? A spiritual interpretation of the beatitudes can be very helpful. One can rightly say that Christ does not advocate putting a radical end to the pursuit of worldly values as the Christian ideal, no, instead, worldly riches, abundance, pleasures, glories, joys have to be approached with a Christian spirit. Christians must be ready to detach themselves from the lifestyles that do not glorify God and edify the soul. Christians must prioritize the pursuit of virtues over the often tendency to wallow in a lifestyle that gives joy only to the flesh and the senses. The favored and the blessed as the world understands it must partner with the less privileged in this journey of life and not to see them as a nuisance to be ejected from existence.

If we make a sincere sober reflection on these gospel beatitudes, we will see they do not contradict the worldly values, instead, they confront us with the hard truth of life. For instance, there was a very rich man from my country, one can say that he had everything needed for worldly comfort. He owned a number of private jets such that he could fly to any part of the universe with ease. He became sick and he was referred to some specialists in the UK. Unfortunately, he did not survive the sickness, the abundance of his wealth could not save him. What became touching was a comment someone made on the social media. His remains were bundled back to his home country, not in his private jet, not in the business class of a commercial flight, not even in the economy seat, he did not have the privilege of sharing in the living area of the commercial airplane like every other carry-on bag. Instead, he was packaged like a cargo and packed with other check-in boxes and luggage in the belly of the aircraft.

This is the hard reality of this life. In this type of scenario, it would be easy to understand that Christ was not mistaken when he defined where lies true and everlasting blessedness and happiness. The parable of the Richman and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31, pictured it well. The status of the Richman was indeed to be envied in the world but immediately the pendulum swung to the other direction, the glories of the world was seen in its emptiness. The challenge of the gospel beatitude remains whether we are to be happy only in the worldly ways or are we also to appropriate in our lives Christ’s teaching on where lies everlasting happiness.