Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica VI per Annum C
13 February 2022

 This weekend our secular, cultural focus may be on the rivalry between the Bengals and the Rams, but the Scripture selections focus our attention on the face-off between the blessed and the cursed, the face-off between the righteous – those who hope in the Lord and rejoice to live according to His Law – and the wicked – those who put their trust in human beings, in the world, in material goods, and in the strength of their flesh.  Read again the first reading, the psalm, and the gospel and you will see in all three the clear dichotomy between the blessed and the cursed.  The first reading from the Prophet Jeremiah gives us this focus: “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings…. He is like a barren bush in the desert…. Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord…. He is like a tree planted beside the waters.”  The psalm takes up some of the very same images.  This message of blessing and curse comes to its fulfillment in the blessings and the woes of Jesus’ teaching in today’s gospel.

 Jesus repeats the very same message of Jeremiah and the psalm.  But Jesus’ comments about the rich and the poor are not merely observations about their literal economic class; rather, Jesus teaches that the material state of the rich and the poor symbolizes their spiritual state – except inverted.  The rich are the wicked who boast of their self-sufficiency, the strength of their flesh.  The poor are the humble, who put their hope and trust in the Lord.

 In the gospel, Jesus stood on a stretch of level ground and, by his teaching, leveled the preconceptions of his contemporaries as he levels ours!  Why say our secular vision is being leveled?  Because I bet most of us here listen to Jesus’ teaching and think: The poor, the hungry, the weeping, those hated, excluded, insulted and denounced are blessed?  The proof of our secular vision is that we don’t think these people blessed, which betrays where our trust really lies – in the world, in the flesh, in material goods.  And on the flipside, I bet most of us here listen to Jesus’ teaching and think: Why are the rich, and those filled, and those laughing, and those who are spoken well of told by Jesus “Woe to you!”?  That thought too betrays our worldly vision.  We think those who are well-off, comfortable, satisfied, and strong are truly blessed.  But Jesus reminds us that all the things we fill up on, the things we place trust in, are not as stable and secure as we tend to act or think, and they slip through our fingers when we pass from here.  Then, those who are full of the world, the flesh, and material goods will experience an emptiness, a poverty, a sadness, an isolation and a hunger that is incomprehensible, eternal and never-ending.

 Yet we struggle to hear this in our fallen nature and in our flesh, where we give so much attention to earthly well-being.  It might help us uncover this teaching of the Lord by considering what preceded it in the Old Testament.  In the Book of Deuteronomy we find Moses teaching God’s people after they had been wandering long years in the desert, a wandering whose purpose was in part punishment, and in part to work out from them all the ways of thinking they had adopted in slavery in Egypt.  Moses presents them God’s law, restating it to gain their acceptance of it before they will enter the Promised Land, and he also mentions blessings and curses (cf. Dt. 28).  In that teaching Moses indicates that if they obey God’s law and His ways it will be met with the blessing of children and land and crops and cattle and prosperity and peace.  In other words, the signs of blessing will be earthly reward.  In Jesus’ teaching today he is inverting the lesson.  The earthly blessings become the dangers, become the curses.  Why?  Because in earthly blessing we can tend to place our security and find little reason to turn our hearts toward zealous searching for God and His ways.  To bring about his Kingdom in the New Covenant, the Lord teaches us that the earthly blessings run the risk of becoming a trap; whereas, earthly poverty, and hunger, and struggle, these can lead us to turn our hearts to God and to seek His Kingdom.  No doubt this sounds odd to us.  We may want to reject this inverted lesson.  But in this can we not see and understand the Cross in a new way?!  To bring his Kingdom, the Lord endured the Cross.  The greatest loss and suffering and evil became the passage to the incomprehensible gain and joy and blessing of heaven.

 With all this in mind I wonder if there isn’t something in the experience of the last two years with COVID that might reveal to us something we need to admit about where our heart runs the risk of being focused.  In what ways do we still need to accept the New Covenant lesson of the Lord that our heart and our treasure must be on his Kingdom and not merely life in this realm?  Now to be clear, no one should hear this suggestion I am making as being pro-vax or anti-vax or pro-mask or anti-mask.  That’s far too superficial a focus.  If you have health and age risks and you determine that a vaccine, after careful moral examination, is acceptable and important for your situation, then get it.  If you determine your risks are low and you prefer not to get it, then don’t.  If you have compromised health and need to be cautious then feel free to wear a mask or don’t wear one.  My point however is to look more deeply into what we might learn from our collective response to COVID.  Is there a chance we might need to admit that we seek our blessings and our stability here in this life, a life that will not last?  Do we do just about anything to prolong our bodily health and life, whereas we’d have to admit, a stark contrast to the comparatively little we do to protect the health and life of the soul by say, admitting sin in confession, working to change sinful habits, and committing to daily prayer?  Do we view our prosperity as earthbound?  Or do we really seek heaven, even while we appreciate and guard and foster our life here for as many years as the Lord will give us?  As Christians we do not dismiss the body or fail to take care of it.  We care for it because it is good.  Yet our care for it does not become an exclusive focus on this life.  Rather we strive for holiness so that after we pass, our body might resurrect and be joined again to our soul in the life of heaven.  If we maintain this proper Christian focus then we accept from the Lord that our material blessings in this life bring with them responsibilities, such that if we are rich we are not hopeless, but we use those gifts to glorify God.  If we maintain this proper Christian focus then we also accept from the Lord that our material poverty in this life can help to turn our hearts to God as the lasting source of blessing and treasure.  The Lord’s teaching today helps us understand how – to borrow images from Jeremiah – even in the heat and the drought of life, that is, in the penances, in the mortifications, and in the sufferings we endure in this life we do not fear and we remain like a sturdy tree whose roots stretch out and whose leaves stay green.

 The Scriptures teach us that true wealth, satisfaction, and lasting life are found in God alone through His Son Jesus Christ.  However in our lives we try to carry the label and name of Christian while living more for the world and of the world, St. Paul reminds us that “[i]f for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.”  In whatever ways we choose sin, may Christ’s Spirit speak to us today “Woe to you!”  Ask yourself today, in what areas of my life am I living in contradiction to Christ and his clear teaching?  Ask the Lord to help you hear loud and clear, “Woe to you!”  Having heard Christ’s warning, may we then repent of our sins by confession and by serious reform of our lives so that we may be like a tree planted near running water, yielding its fruit in due season.  Blessed are they who hope in the Lord!