"Mother Teresa has said that perhaps the greatest poverty in the West today is not TB or leprosy or starvation. It is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for." Every morning, every Missionary of Charity says the following prayer, let us pray it:

Dear Lord, the Great Healer, I kneel before You, since every perfect gift must come from You. I pray, give skill to my hands, clear vision to my mind, kindness and meekness to my heart. Give me singleness of purpose, strength to lift up a part of the burden of my suffering ones, and a true realization of the privilege that is mine. Take from my heart all guile and worldliness, that with the simple faith of a child, I may rely on you." AMEN

(Synthesis 2/15/98)

Our Gospel for today is from Jesus' Sermon on the Plain. It is preceded by a debate with challengers about the Sabbath, the calling of the twelve, and praying on the mountain. Jesus comes down the mountain to speak to a great crowd…unusually one of both Gentiles and Jews. It begins his instruction to the disciples both the twelve and others. We read that he came down from the mountain and healed all; that power came out of him. It is clear, then, given the subsequent Beatitudes, that social justice and healing are indelibly linked. It is interesting that the people didn't come to test Jesus but to hear him and be healed.
Luke's Beatitudes are very different from those of Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount. They are placed in the second person, not the third. They are prophetic in that they are direct and not spiritualized, as are Matthew's. The contrast is stark, for instance, in Luke we hear "Blessed are the poor." In Matthew this is changed to read "Blessed are the poor in spirit." The latter allows for greater participation, whereas the former is direct and unqualified.
Luke has four blessings and four woes. The first three are linked in that hunger and weeping are aspects of poverty. The final one is perhaps an Early Church add on, as the people were being persecuted for the sake of the Gospel. Luke calls all of us unequivocally to prophecy and justice.

Gutierrez has said:
"God has a preference for the poor not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply because they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God's will. The ultimate basis for the privileged position of the poor is not in the poor themselves but in God, in the gratuitousness and universality of God's agapic love."
(Gustavo Gutierrez, "Song and Deliverance, Voices from the Margin, Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, Maryknoll, 1991, p. 131)



The word, "blessing," evokes memories of the blessing by God of the descendents of Abraham and Jacob's blessing of his sons. (copied) It is a sign of God's favor, and to be blessed has been translated to be "honored." Ultimately blessedness means being bound closely, firmly to God, dependent upon God entirely. (Homily Service, 2/15/04, p. 32) It is to this blessedness that each of us are called. It is not necessarily wealth that corrupts, but anything which keeps us from being totally dependent upon God.
The great danger, for those of us living in a democratic country, is to depend upon the state to make things right, to have the system assure that all of God's abundance is available to each and every citizen. There is no system that can assure this, as we have learned, but only the love and unselfish sacrifice of the people of God.
In one of the "Peanuts" cartoon strips, Charlie Brown holds up his hands in front of Lucy and says:

"These are hands that someday may accomplish great things; these are hands that someday may do marvelous works. They may build mighty bridges, or heal the sick, or hit home-runs, or write soul-stirring novels. These are the hands which may someday change the course of destiny." To this Lucy replies, "They've got jelly on them!"
(Sunday Sermons, Volume 37, Number 1, page 20)

Given the "woes" of the Gospel – the rich have received their consolation, the full will be hungry, and the laughing will mourn and weep – what is the hope for those of us who are the rich? First, blessing is internal, not external. It is a decision to remove anything in our lives that blocks our dependence upon God. If things, or money or resentment or lack of concern for others is sticking to our hands like jelly, we need to repent and renew.
A friend told me an old story recently. It seems that the Abbot of a certain monastery was deeply troubled by the way the monks were treating one another. There was competitiveness, jealousy, back-biting and other cruel behavior. He called in his friend, the Rabbi, and shared his deep concern. The Rabbi offered to speak to the brothers. In the days ahead the entire atmosphere of the monastery changed. People were kind and thoughtful; charity and love prevailed. The Abbot asked the Rabbi how he had accomplished this. The Rabbi replied: "I simply told them that one of them was the Messiah."
We are called to see the face of Jesus in each and every person we meet. This includes not only the economically poor, but all those, as Mother Teresa said, who are "unwanted, unloved and uncared for.” In her reflection for the people of the Episcopal Church on February 7, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has suggested that during the upcoming season of Lent:

"…We might all constructively pray for a greater awareness and understanding of the strangers around us, particularly those strangers whom we are not yet ready or able to call friends. That awareness can only come with our own greater investment in discovering the image of God in those strangers. It will require an attitude of humility, recognizing that we can not possibly know the fullness of God if we are unable to recognize God's hand at work in unlikely persons or contexts….as we seek to serve that suffering servant made evident in our midst, we might reflect on what Jesus himself called us -- friends (John 15:15) (Episcopal News Service, 2/7/2007, 'Christ in the stranger's guise', The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori)

The Bishop closes her reflection with this Celtic Rune of Hospitality:

I saw a stranger yesterday;
I put food in the eating place,
Drink in the drinking place,
Music in the listening place;
And in the sacred name of the Triune God
He blessed myself and my house,
My cattle and my dear ones,]
and the lark said in her song:
Oft, Oft, Oft,
Goes Christ in the stranger's guise.

AMEN