Do you appreciate God’s blessings enough? - Daily Reflections September 10,2014

AN UPSIDE DOWN WORLD

 

By proclaiming the Beatitudes, Jesus takes the standards accepted by the world and turns them upside down. Those whom Jesus calls miserable, the society would praise and call happy and blessed. The people whom Jesus praises as happy and blessed, the world would call wretched. What He says is at odds with what society would say. Does it mean that we all should become poor, hungry and sad? Is Jesus glorifying poverty?

       Surely not! Let me quote here a parable I found in the book, The Beatitudes, by the Latin American theologian Segundo Galilea. He writes: “We are in a miserable little village of the Andes. The vast majority of its people are very poor. There are no health facilities here, no hospital, no medicines, no doctors or nurses. Neither have these poor the money to travel to the city for treatment if they fall ill... In the same village, as often happens, there is also a group of families in more comfortable circumstances. The latter can afford to journey to the city to be looked after.

       “One day a clinic is set up in the village. Now the people can be treated for their diseases right in their village. Furthermore the clinic is free.

       “Now comes the day of the formal opening. A priest is asked to bless the new facility. He says, this minister of Christ: ‘You are happy ones today, you, the poor of this village. For this clinic is yours. It belongs to you.’”

       Galilea reflects on this and writes, “At first glance it might seem that the priest’s assertion is not accurate. Actually, the clinic is for everyone, is it not? It is free for everyone... So why does the priest mention only the poor? For a very good reason. It is the poor who have most reason to rejoice, most reason to be ‘happy’ about the clinic. For the poor, the clinic is the fulfillment of an ancient promise... True, the clinic is not for them alone. It is for rich and poor alike. But the primary beneficiaries are the poor.”

       Jesus does not advocate poverty but He says that those who suffer now will eventually experience the eternal reward and rejoice much more than those who live a comfortable life here on earth. Fr. Rudy Horst, SVD

 

REFLECTION QUESTION: Do you appreciate God’s blessings enough?

 

Lord, thank You for Your message in this puzzling Gospel passage. With Your grace, may I be able to reach out to the less fortunate and let them feel now a bit of their future eternal happiness.