The Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, is a very concrete picture of what Christian life is all about and how Christian life should be lived out everyday. We heard the Beatitudes and in this sermon of Jesus he clearly points out to us that, indeed, Christianity is a thing that is out of this world. And so, to be a true Christian, we must forget about the world which is very hard and quite impossible for us to do. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek and the hungry, the merciful and those with a pure heart, the peacemakers and the persecuted. They are blessed because someday they will rejoice in God’s kingdom.
On the other side of it, the exact opposite of these things are what the world considers as blessed. Nobody wants to be hungry and thirsty, and nobody wants to mourn and weep. In like manner, no one among us wants to be persecuted and be trampled and insulted by other people. These are things that we really can’t endure and these are the things that we will not allow to take place in our lives. It is because those “blessed” in this world are the ones who are happy, the ones who are rich and famous, the ones who cheat on others out of their personal interest, the ones who would recourse to violence just to uplift himself and his selfish motives. These are the kind of people that rule the world today and, in the world standards, they are so blessed indeed. However, we can never call them Christians.
To be a Christian is to live out the beatitudes everyday in our life. This is the condition of discipleship and this is what Christianity is all about. Maybe we will ask ourselves, do I need to mourn and be lonely just to enter the kingdom of God? Do I need to be persecuted in order to be counted among the saints in heaven? Do I need to renounce my riches and be poor just to inherit the kingdom of God? These are questions which when asked of us we have no option but to consider our stand and conviction in life. These are the questions that we don’t have a ready answer because these questions ring not only in our ears but they confront our entire being. These are serious questions which demand a serious answer and the answers will surely have an imprint on our very life because here we have to make a choice and we have to live up to our choice. Anyway, our options are wide open. But then we must not disregard the outcome of our answers and we must be ready to give ourselves to whatever it takes.
My dear friends, Christ is not demanding from us to undergo all the sufferings in this world just to be with him. What he says to all of us is very simple: “Repent and come follow me.” Theologians have written books about the existence of God, about theology, about the church and man’s salvation and almost everything that pertains to God and to our faith. But the words of Jesus are simple: “Come follow me!” This is a quite simple invitation for us to be Christians but then we always fail because we are not ready, and we are not prepared to be real Christians.
We are not ready to be Christians because we are not prepared to live out the beatitudes and we are afraid to turn our backs from the enticements of the world. And of course, we are not ready to be considered fools because following Jesus is acting like a fool in the mindset of this world we live in. But the saints are fools that lived ahead of us and now where did they end up?
They ended up dead, tortured, beaten and stoned to death, burned alive and some of them lived their entire life serving the lepers and the sick, when they can choose to live their lives in utter happiness and tranquility. Fools, indeed, but now they are enjoying the fruits of all their labors for they are now one with God in his kingdom. Fools, but they are fools for Christ, and Christ did not leave them out, but welcomed them in his heavenly kingdom. Maybe in heaven they are no longer fools, but when they look down on us, they are weeping silently because they see us here making fools of ourselves. They still mourn, but now they are mourning because we are destroying the gift of life that God has given us, because we don’t know and we don’t understand that our life originated from God and therefore it must go back to him, with all our freedom to give it back to him.
It’s not bad to be rich, it is not bad to be happy, it is not bad to enjoy our life here on earth but the evil comes in when we get so attached with all these worldly pleasure that is soon to fade away. Jesus is not telling us to mourn and weep all the time but when the time for us to mourn comes in, Jesus is telling us to accept it by heart as our sharing in his paschal mystery. Jesus doesn’t want us to be persecuted but if it comes to us, we must welcome it as he did when he was persecuted and put to death for our salvation. This is the meaning of the beatitudes. It is not a sort of a punishment for us to make us unhappy and to make us suffer but it is just a guide so that when we experience the same things as what we have heard in that sermon, we can have an avenue so that our sufferings and even our death will be worthwhile.
Let us therefore consider these things in our hearts and minds and let us pray that God may give us the courage and strength to be able to live our Christian life by simply heeding his amazingly simple invitation. Come, follow me!