We need to work out who among us in fact is blessed, because we have people who have been on both sides of the Lord’s values table. They have at one point been poor and at another prosperous, hungry and later well-fed, have wept and laughed, been insulted and honoured.
To help us along, what if we think of blessings as God’s presence and promise? Blessings cannot be temporary, because they come from God who is unchanging.
We should be suspicious of things that don’t last. Sure, we can use them, but not totally rely on them. And that includes each one of us: in our mortality and susceptibility to sin, we demonstrate that only God can be completely trusted.
This is one of the lessons of Easter: if there’s no resurrection, then we might as well get grasping and hoarding. If there’s no resurrection, then it’s only here in this life that there would be any consequences – things like poverty and hunger, sorrow and rejection. But because there is indeed the resurrection for us as well as Jesus, and this life is already dovetailing with the next, then there are eternal consequences for doing good and for doing evil. And so, two ways open up before us: the merely human way and God’s way.
So, who is blessed? Those who take God’s way in every circumstance, no matter what they have or don’t have. To take God’s way is to be with him, to enjoy his company. It means to be now receiving his presence and promise.
This Sunday we’re beginning to celebrate our parish school’s centenary year. We pray for our school and its members, that its mission may be fulfilled: to educate in a way that strengthens Catholic faith. We can be proud and grateful that it all started very quickly here at St Dominic’s. The friars started the parish in 1924 and the school in 1925. But I gather 1925 was a rather difficult year for the friars, because they promptly handed the school over to the sisters when they arrived in 1926!
Our school centenary year is a time of thanksgiving. We’re grateful to God that we are part of a historic learning community in which his presence can be felt and his promises received. We have been blessed. It’s not always been easy: there are daily challenges and generational problems, but there are also weekly victories and lifelong gains. God’s presence reinforces our hope. We hope in him that St Dominic’s will flourish in every way, that learners and educators will joyfully persevere on their journey together, and that there’ll be ever-closer ties between our wonderful school and the lively parish from which it comes.
The first people who heard the Lord’s table of blessings and woes knew exactly which side they were on; we however might need more convincing. The first disciples knew they were blessed because they were indeed poor and hungry, upset and insulted. Their new faith didn’t make them prosperous or powerful. But they had the presence of God among them, and so they persevered together. They knew he was holding out to them the promise of eternal life, and so they went on. And finally, they emerged from the ruins of a godless society, as we shall too.
This therefore is the Lord’s point: not that the prevailing are like gods, but that God prevails; and those who are with God, who are taking his way, will also prevail.
God’s prevailing in every circumstance is most clearly seen in the life of the Lord Jesus. He spent his earthly life blessing others with comforting healing and enlightening teaching. He opened minds and enlarged hearts so that God could be found in them. And he met his end as a criminal for our sins. But his Father loved him back into life, so that even after death and from his Father’s side, he now lives on doing the same work as before.
So, Christ is our beatitude, our blessing. He is the presence of God on earth and the guardian of glories promised us. Christ imbues us with hope that we may see any adverse present is not our future. He supplies us with graces so that difficulties are no longer insurmountable.
The Lord is with us. He is for us. And he is risen from the dead, continually blessing people who are on his way. So, take heart even today from the Lord’s empty tomb and have no fear: you are in the mind of God.
Fr Paul Rowse, OP Parish Priest