February 14, 2025
Jesus’s beatitudes according to Luke probably speak more clearly today than ever. What are the values we cherish? A short reflection:
We often feel that we have not had much choice in our lives. Our bodies, our families, our environment were all mostly given to us. Many times we end up in jobs or careers that we wish we could change. Many of us feel that we have little control over public life or politics.
Ultimately, however, we have a basic choice to make but at times that is not clear to us. Life-changing options stand before us but we continue on with life in the same old way. One of the basic messages of Jewish teaching was the fundamental choice we have with reference to God and others.
The first reading from Jeremiah gives us the same message as Psalm 1 which is our responsorial psalm today. We can live either receiving the life-giving waters or we can live dry and empty lives and die. We can live striving to follow God’s path of goodness or we can wither making up our own ideas of goodness.
Jesus lays this out very clearly in the Gospel. Many of us will remember this passage as “The Beatitudes” in the version that St. Matthew gives in his Gospel. But Luke’s version makes things clearer for us: we can choose ways or blessedness or we can choose ways of woe. We can choose paths in life that fill us with joy, or we can choose paths that lead us to frustration.
God wants to give us the fullness of life, joy, and love. But often we think our joy and happiness comes from getting things and having power over others when the truth is very different: our joy and power comes from the way we recognize God’s love in our lives even in our poverty or sorrow or struggles. People are blessed and happy when they have discovered for themselves the care that God has for them especially in their struggles.
In our culture we often talk about those who are very rich and famous as if these were our idols. We talk about movie stars or famous singers; we talk about people like Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffet, or Jeff Bezos as if they found the secret to life with all their billions of dollars. But this is illusion. So many people spend their lives searching for money or fame but they still are frustrated or unhappy.
Haven’t we all known people who do not have much money or power, who are not famous, yet whose lives have been incredibly rich because they have come to know God and to love others in God. All of our saints lived this way. But, more importantly, we’ve had parents or grandparents, friends and associates, whose lives have been tremendously happy in spite of the external circumstances of their lives.
The difference is this: some people have decided to put God and God’s way of life at the center, and others have tried to live without God or a relationship to God. The abundant water of divine life is there, being poured out for us. The choice we all have is whether we drink this life-giving water or whether we will waste way in frustration.