Blessed are the poor; woe to you who are rich!: Jorge Miró

Fr. Jorge Miró shares with the readers of Exaudi his commentary on the Gospel of this Sunday, February 16, 2025, entitled “Blessed are the poor; woe to you who are rich!”

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Today, the Lord’s Word invites us to discover another of the signs of God’s action in man’s heart—another of the signs of letting the Holy Spirit act—and a prophecy of what the Spirit will do in you if you confidently accept Jesus’s preaching.

Both the first reading and the Psalm have pointed this out to us: Blessed is the man who does not follow the advice of the wicked… they will be chaff that the wind blows away… Blessed is the man whose joy is the law of the Lord… He will be like a tree planted by the ditch.

Because the Beatitudes are not a program to be carried out with your strength, nor a utopia to dream of.

The Beatitudes are like the identity card of the Christian (cf. Francis, _GeS_ 63), they are like an “ultrasound” of the heart of Jesus. This is what the heart of Jesus is like. They are like a veiled interior biography of Jesus, like a portrait of his figure (cf. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 98ff.).

And this is how your heart will be if you let the Holy Spirit shape it.

If faith is authentic, it transforms life, it bears fruit. Works are not the cause of salvation, but the consequence of having accepted the free gift of salvation.

He who has accepted salvation and has the Holy Spirit in his heart sees the works of the old man disappear and the fruits of the Spirit appear as a gift: charity, joy, peace, patience, long-suffering, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, continence, chastity (Catechism, 1832).

He who lives open to the Holy Spirit sees that he cannot live either following the advice of the wicked, who see God as a rival and feel threatened by Him; or walking the path of sinners, who remain obstinate in their sin, without a true desire for conversion; or in the midst of the gathering of cynics who, incapable of seeing the love of God in the midst of their lives, spend their days complaining about everything, trapped by envy, rancor and resentment.

Rather, in the midst of his weakness, he lives everything in the Lord, with the Lord and for the Lord: None of us lives for himself and none of us dies for himself. If we live, we live for the Lord; if we die, we die for the Lord; so whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this is why Christ died and rose again, that he might be Lord of the dead and the living (cf. Rom 14:7-9).

And he lives like a pilgrim on the way to the goal: heaven: it is of no use to one to gain the whole world if he loses his soul (cf. Mt 16:26). He lives with his feet on the ground, his gaze on heaven and the Lord in his heart, because if we have placed our hope in Christ only in this life, we are the most unfortunate of all humanity, and woe to you, you rich people, for you have already received your consolation!

Take heart! Trust in the Lord and let yourself be done by the Holy Spirit. He will do the work of holiness in you, taking into account your weakness and your poverty.

Come, Holy Spirit!