Faith-Jesus-The Beatitudes

HOMILY WEEK 23 03 – Year I

Renewal and Revelation

(Col 3:1-11; Ps 145; Lk 6:20-26)

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If you’re green you grow, if you’re not, you rot!

That rather striking statement carries a lot of truth and actually applies to today’s readings that invite us into a life-long process of renewal and transformation.

St. Paul, as usual, sets the tone in the first reading to the Colossians. He reminds them, and us, that we have been raised with Christ, that we are to seek the things that are above, that our real life is actually hidden in with Christ in God. He then very bluntly tells us to put to death whatever is worldly and clothe ourselves with our new self.

What St. Paul is trying to articulate and talk us into, is what our Eastern cousins call the process of theosis, or divinization. Unfortunately, we in the West with our love for technology, materialism, objectivity and rationalism, seem to have drifted away from that key element of our faith.

It is key because it was central for Jesus, who began his preaching with a clarion call to repent, to metanoia, to put on our highest mind, to change. He also taught that unless we become like little children, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Today in the Gospel of Luke, he reverses all our usual values – blessed are the poor and humble, the hungry, those who mourn and those who are persecuted.

Over and above that, Jesus gave us the central pattern for our lives – passion, death and resurrection. This is not just something he underwent to save us – he demands that we follow him with the words, “Unless we take up our cross and follow him, we will not experience eternal life.”

The full pattern for Jesus involved six stages: passion, death, resurrection, appearances, ascension and Pentecost. For us, that pattern becomes hurt (we all get hurt in life), loss (something is lost and dies whenever we are hurt), survival (we are still here, but God wants thrivers, not survivors), grieving (letting go of our losses), forgiving (all those who have hurt us in any way) and finally experiencing eternal life (peace and joy) here and now. The key for us is that we forgive those who have hurt us in any way, and grieve our concomitant losses. Doing so opens up within us a space for God’s forgiveness and spirit to come and make its home in us. We begin to experience the peace and joy that only the Spirit of Jesus can give us.

The Beatitudes Jesus teaches in the gospel are actually attitudes belonging to the kingdom of God: poverty of spirit, hunger for justice, ability to grieve with others, and courage to endure persecution.  The woes are opposite warnings not to become too attached to money and satisfaction, to be sated and complacent, lacking compassion, self-centered and egotistical. These can be summed up as the false gods of money, fame and power that hinder our entering into the kingdom of God here and now.

The Eucharist is a celebration of faith that both forgives and heals us, and helps to take up our cross and follow Christ. May our celebration empower us to continue on a life-long journeyof renewal and transformation, of theosis and divinization.