6th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Beatitudes
Today we hear St. Luke’s version of the Beatitudes. Among the ways they differ from St. Matthew’s (Ch 5:3-12), as I’ve heard it suggested, is that Matthew spiritualizes these states of blessedness, as interior dispositions: Blessed are the poor in spirit…..those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, etc. Whereas, for St. Luke, Jesus is addressing a material reality: Blessed are you who are poor….you who are hungry. As people who are body and soul, both sets of Beatitudes have meaning for us in this lifetime.
These Beatitudes reflect what I think of as Jesus’ upside-down logic. In nearly everything he does, he’s trying to point us to something beyond our present reality—to the Kingdom, where the realities of this world are turned upside-down. Those who have it all here, will be without there, and vice versa. Those who have it easy here, will have it hard there, and vice versa.
Of course, we see this upside-down logic in Jesus himself: the One through whom all material things of this world were created, who lived detached from possessions; the One who came so that we might have life and have it abundantly, gave up his life; the One who said, “whoever wishes to save his life will lose it” (Lk 9:24).
Jesus intended to bring that upside-down logic of the Beatitudes through his words and his actions. But he also did by establishing a movement, a Church. It began with the Twelve he chose, but beyond that a larger band of followers, a movement.
The Church hasn’t always done this well. As it aspires to be an instrument of the coming Kingdom, it’s comprised of people of this world. And so we’ve had Church leaders at times, who have been at times misguided, weak, sinful and scandalous, including the recently laicized Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. And yet here we remain, 2000 years later. How is that? Why didn’t it die?
One way of understanding what has kept us together and has helped us to live the Beatitudes, in whatever way we’ve succeeded, is that it’s driven by the spirit of Jesus that has worked through Peter and his successors. As we celebrate later this week, the feast day of the Chair of Peter (Feb 22), I think of Jesus’ words to Simon Peter (and here I paraphrase): Simon, Simon, behold Satan is going to try to derail you, but I have prayed that your own faith may not fail; and you must strengthen your brothers (Lk 22:32).
You may know the word chair or seat in Latin is cathedra—from which we get the word cathedral. In the early centuries of Christianity, a wooden chair was on display, said to have been the chair on which Peter sat upon as head of the Church. Over time the chair decayed and deteriorated, but in the 9th century, craftsmen fortified it to endure.
Most all of us have at least seen images of the interior of St. Peter’s Basilica. At the far, opposite end from the main doors is the apse. In that high-altar, created by artist, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, around the year 1650, what one first notices there is the beautiful stained-glass window, variations of yellow and orange, with the Holy Spirit in the center. Immediately around the window, like a frame, are clouds and rays of light, cast from bronze, seeming to spill forth.
Beneath the stained-glass image one sees what looks like a giant chair. Despite its appearance, it’s not a chair; it’s a reliquary that houses the aforementioned Chair of Peter.
Immediately above the reliquary-chair are two bronze angels, each holding a key and together holding a crown over the empty chair. Around the base of the reliquary-chair are four cast-bronze figures, doctors of the Church (Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius, and John Chrysostom). An optical illusion of sorts, the Chair of Peter appears to be floating between heaven and earth: a powerful image of the Church, both human and divine; neither entirely of earth, nor entirely of heaven.
In whatever way we continue to proclaim the Beatitudes, or gather to hear them proclaimed, and even more, that we carry them out, in their upside-down logic—advancing God’s Kingdom—it’s at least in part due to the prayer of Jesus for Peter and his successors.
May God bless our current pope and those that follow, that they may help us to truly be a Church for the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful, and those persecuted for their Christian faith—a Church of the Beatitudes and Jesus’ upside-down logic. Let us pray that from the Holy Spirit, so beautifully imaged by Bernini, our pope continues to receive strength, wisdom, courage, and love, necessary for so great a task.
An English Catholic priest named Ronald Knox (D. 1957) once said:
“Perhaps it would be a good thing if every Christian, certainly if every priest, could dream once in his life that he were pope, and wake from that nightmare in a sweat of agony”.