Scripture Reflection for 2/14/10 (6th Sunday in Ord. Time)

I wrote this for the Catholics on Call website. They suggested some changes, some of which I didn't feel comfortable making. So this is the version with some tweaks based on their suggestions but mostly what I originally wrote...

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Be Exceedingly Glad

“Rejoice! Rejoice! And be exceedingly glad! For great is your reward, in heaven,” Jesus Christ proclaims in Godspell, the musical adaptation of the Gospel of Matthew. In one of my favorite songs in all of musical theatre, Jesus and John the Baptist go back and forth in a wildly entertaining song-setting of the words of Christ in the Gospel. The lyrics describe all the rough things that can happen in life—feeling sad, seeming to have dim prospects for the future, having lots of bills to pay—but the song itself is sung happily in a cheerful, celebratory way because ultimately we will have it all through our salvation in Christ.

The first reading and responsorial psalm echo one another by beseeching us to hope in the Lord, telling us that simply hoping in the Lord makes us blessed. The hopeful believer is like a tree whose roots reach down into the water supply and endure the desolation of droughts. Likewise, when we hope in the Lord, our lives and hearts will never lack nourishment or whither away to nothing—the wicked are like the chaff that the winds turn into nothing.

The foundational virtue underlying hope is trust in God. We must feel within us that leaving our lives to the Lord’s ordination, His plan, will lead us to be filled with good things. God created everything, and He foreknows all that will transpire in the world of freedom He created. He can foresee the bad things people and societies will do, and in His grand wisdom, God knows how good can come of all things, good or bad. For example, God foreknows that an earthquake may strike a part of the world; He foresees the disaster and graces the global community to act in solidarity to aid the affected people and their land. The affected people undergo suffering and hardship that we can’t really explain, but that is when God inspires us to aid our brothers and sisters in need most. We can answer the call to service in our Church both through physical, humanitarian aid and through prayer.

Luckily for us, in our limited and doubting understanding as humans, God sent His Son Jesus Christ to be a tangible sign of His infinite love: “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him shall never die but have eternal life” (John 3:16). He made it so that our entire faith wasn’t just hope—He gave us His Son to elicit faith in us that underpins our hope for eternal life with God. By undertaking this grand miracle, God offered us a powerful sign of His love. Through Jesus and His Church, we remain in hope for the coming of the Kingdom, but part of our hope became belief when God came to us in the Word Made Flesh. We continue to hope for the Kingdom of God to come in fullness, but Paul tells us that Christ has already come to fulfill the beginning of our hope. Based on Christ’s coming, dying, and rising, we must now be believers in the saving power of Christ and our Resurrection in Him. “If we have hoped in Christ for this life only, we are the most pitiable people of all.” Paul calls us to live Christian lives while on earth but to be always aware that Christ’s victory points us towards our eternal peace with Him in Heaven.

In the Beatitudes, Christ explains how people are already blessed or full of woe because of their current behaviors. Jesus teaches us how God blesses those who are afflicted—the poor, hungry, saddened, and even those persecuted because of Christ. It is up to us to help make visible and felt the blessings of God to those people that often go overlooked in society. Our Church is a place where we act as Christ’s body to help the struggling poor, feed the hungry, and bring the Light of Christ to the downtrodden. Whether it is through simple food drives or fundraisers or broader campaigns for social justice and political advocacy of marginalized causes, Christians can answer the call to compassion and service in this world, in this day and age.

Jesus’ proclamations in this sermon are profound and important, but between the woes and blessings that get great attention are Luke’s version of Jesus words of hope: “Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven.” As they wrap up their song-and-dance in Godspell, Jesus and John remind us, “You must never be distressed… it’s all for the best!"