Beatitude - a deep sense of contentment, peace, and satisfaction

Homily for Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C

You might be interested to know that there is a Global Happiness Study which looks at what makes people happy around the world. There is a measurement of happiness by country. South Africa is one of the countries included in the study and last year was ranked the 83rd happiest country in the world. You may be interested to know that only 10% of South Africans say they are very happy, while 32% say they are not very happy or not happy at all (ref). That’s a pretty poor state of affairs, especially when we consider that the philosophers of Ancient Greece taught that fundamentally human beings want to be happy.

Surely, that’s true? Deep down all of us really want to be happy. Whatever it is that we desire, it is because we believe that that thing, or things, or aspect, will bring us happiness. The philosophers called it beatitude - a deep sense of contentment, peace, and satisfaction. The word, “blessed” in the Gospel today is used to translate the original Greek word, beatitude, in the text.

Now remember that happiness, in the best sense of the word, is not a temporary, emotional, sentimental feeling. True happiness is far deeper and lasting, and is less dependent on the changing circumstances of life. The readings for today teach us how to find this true and lasting happiness. This is relevant in a special way to every one of us because we are a people made for happiness, and we long for happiness.

The Scriptures for Mass this Sunday teach us that being truly happy comes from making God the centre and sole reference point of our lives. This is what it means to place our trust in the Lord. So, the key to understanding the biblical path to happiness is the response we prayed in the psalm:

Blessed the one who has placed his trust in the Lord. This is also the essential message of the first reading from the prophet Jeremiah.

Jeremiah contrasts the person who puts his trust in human beings, with the person who trusts in the Lord. The person who puts his trust in human beings is described as cursed and the images that are associated with him are thirsty plants in the desert and dry salty places which cannot sustain life. By contrast the person who puts his trust in the Lord is blessed, and the image associated with him is a tree planted next to a stream of water which continues to bear fruit even in time of drought.

It is significant that Jeremiah does not say that the one who trusts in the Lord will not experience heat or drought, but rather that he will stay green and fruitful even during the drought. All of us know the experience of drought in some form or other. Isn’t it true that we are often anxious and full of worry about the situations in which we find ourselves as human beings? In a sense, these droughts are part of our human condition.

The message of today’s readings is that God can be trusted. He is concerned about us, and he will help us. He is working continually to bring about whatever is good for us. Those who trust in the Lord draw strength from God through prayer and receive the strength to endure the afflictions of this life without losing faith or hope.

In the Gospel there is a beautiful image of the reason we can put our trust in the Lord in times of drought. We hear that, “Jesus came down ...and stopped at a piece of level ground where there was a large gathering who had come to hear him and be cured of their diseases.” This image of Jesus coming down from the mountain to the level ground shows Jesus coming down to the crippled and the arthritic, and those who were too sick to be able to climb the mountain. He came down to them. He wanted to meet them where they were, where they could encounter him.

And in the same way, Jesus comes down to our level and meets us in our present condition of needs and worries – in the droughts of our lives. We might well consider what the equivalent of this level ground is in our lives. Whatever our situation, whatever difficulties we may be facing, however messy we think our lives may be, Jesus comes to meet us. It is a common temptation and misconception in the spiritual life for us to think we need to sort ourselves out first, to get our house in order, to be more acceptable to God, so we can approach him. No, rather Jesus comes to us, precisely in our need and messiness.

Trust in God is also the interpretive key for understanding Jesus’ teaching on beatitude in the Sermon he gives in the Gospel today. You will remember, of course, that a version of these beatitudes is also found at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, in what we call the Sermon on the Mount. In all likelihood these were sermons that Jesus gave often in different places and times and to different people.

Essentially Jesus is teaching that beatitude, or blessedness, or just simply true happiness, comes from trusting in God. And whatever is a substitute for trusting in God, whatever leads us away from trusting in God, robs us of our true happiness. Now, trusting in God is not just a warm, fuzzy, emotional state. It doesn’t mean floating on a spiritual cloud detached from all the challenges and difficulties of our human lives. Rather, it is something concrete. The ultimate reference point and test of our trust is asking what it is that we worship, what is of highest value to us. If we worship anything other than God, we are on shaky ground.

Trusting in God is a fundamental orientation towards God, a seeing things from God’s point of view, a wanting to be in the will of God. And so, putting trust in God is activated by and expressed in certain concrete activities:

Mass, prayer, spiritual reading, faith formation, and the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.

Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.” The issue of being poor is so much more than just material poverty. Certainly, it does include the materially poor, and we can learn much from those who are poor, but the issue also has a broader meaning. The poor are blessed because they, more often than not, know their need for God, their dependence on God. They have learned to trust in God. The poor recognise that what they have comes from God.

Jesus also says, “Woe to you who are rich.” In actual fact, Jesus is not concerned with the amount of money a person has. He's concerned with the false sense of security that money often gives people. It is such a powerful temptation to think that our happiness and contentment in life is dependent on what we have. If we trust in our stuff, we have little room for God in our lives; we can end up acting as though we do not need God.

The “hungry” and the “weeping” and the “persecuted” are variations on the “poor.” The hungry know that only God can satisfy their needs. Those who weep are those who repent of their sins and lack of trust in God. The persecuted, or ridiculed, know why they do what they do and gladly choose to serve unselfishly.

The test for us with respect to these beatitudes, is to ask ourselves where our search for happiness lies. In what do we delight most of all? It comes down to the issue of whether we trust that God can fulfil all our needs. Can God make us happy? Can we entrust our lives, the meaning of our lives and our happiness to God? Can God be enough for us? Jesus comes down to the level ground of our lives and meets us in our human situations, to respond to our needs, to heal us, to give meaning to our lives and to make us happy. Taught by him, we trust him with our lives, our future, our needs, our happiness.