Monsignor Enrique Díaz Díaz shares with the readers of Exaudi his reflection on the Gospel of this Sunday, February 16, 2025, entitled: “Blessed”

***

Jeremiah 17, 5-8: “Cursed is he who trusts in man; blessed is he who trusts in the Lord”

Psalm 1: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord”

1 Corinthians 15, 12. 16-20: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain”

St. Luke 6,17.20-26: “Blessed are the poor – Woe to you who are rich!”

The admiration for the person of Jesus, his call, and his loving gaze, seek to arouse a conscious and free response from the innermost heart of the disciple, an adhesion of his whole person, and an exultant invitation to holiness. The beatitudes give true meaning and fullness to this following and holiness, as the Pope teaches us in “Gaudete et exultate”. They gather together a whole tradition of the Old Testament where he is presented as blessed who puts himself in the hands of the Lord, who listens to his words, who follows his commandments.

The beatitudes, although it is true that they are opposed to our whole world and to all the tendencies of modern man, are the path to find true happiness. If we stop to reflect on each one of them, we will find a great vein of spirituality.

The whole Gospel is good news, but there are central parts that sustain the whole life of the disciple. The Beatitudes, both in Matthew and Luke, form the core that makes Jesus’ proposal different. While Matthew places this sermon on a mountain, wanting to elevate the spirit and present Jesus as a new Moses, with a new and different law, Luke places it on a plain to show Jesus with the people, very close to the people. Matthew reminds us of eight or nine beatitudes, Luke presents only four, and they are linked to the “woes” or “curses” that the prophet Jeremiah had already announced to us. While Matthew insists on a more spiritual and heartfelt aspect with an exhortative sense, Luke makes us face the harsh reality of poverty, misery, pain and hunger. It is important to keep in mind those whom Jesus calls “happy” and those whom he laments because we can be seeking immediate happiness and forget what He values. Jesus calls four kinds of people “happy and blessed”: the poor, those who are hungry, those who cry and those who are persecuted for their faith. And he laments and dedicates his “woes,” which some call curses, to four kinds of people: the rich, those who are satiated, those who laugh, and those who are flattered by the world. How different our values ​​and concepts are! The ambition and motivation of today’s man, or perhaps of the man of all times, is very different. And where are we? Where do we place our happiness?

Jesus destabilizes the scale of values ​​that predominates in society. The beatitudes express a radical change in the values ​​that the presence of the Kingdom demands. What is more, they are a sign of the presence of that Kingdom: they proclaim the arrival of the messianic promises. Whoever says yes to Jesus finds the joy of feeling loved by God and becomes a participant in the history of salvation together with the prophets and with Jesus himself. Someone has asked me how a person can be happy if he is poor. It is difficult to answer with theories. I invite you to contemplate Jesus. I believe that Jesus is immensely happy, and yet he is poor. The beatitudes he proclaims are intimately linked to his person and are the demonstration that one can be truly happy. In a society where profit and interest are always at the forefront, where money is the idol before which people bow down, in an environment where all kinds of security are sought, but where there is no room for true freedom, only the “Man of the Beatitudes” is truly free from all ties. The beatitudes are not separated from the one who pronounced them. If He tells us that the poor and the hungry are happy, it is because He is happy and wants to make us share in His own happiness.

The Beatitudes are not laws, they are the Gospel. The law leaves man to rely on his own strength or on the security offered by goods. The Gospel places man face to face with the gift of God and invites him to make of this gift a fullness of life. The happiness of the poor now lies in the very fact that the Kingdom of God has already come to them. They are blessed because “the Kingdom of God belongs to them” and “because they have God as their King.” Jesus does not promise them happiness, he declares them happy. And he makes this declaration “on a plain,” that is, on the same level and place where society is built on the false values ​​of wealth and power. The Beatitudes are not the reward for moral virtues, for efforts or for conversion. It is the joy of knowing that God has taken his side and that he shares the fate of the helpless. It is not an invitation to remain in misery. Jesus himself rejects it and fights against it because it goes against the will of God. The true disciple must reject it and fight it, and every effort to suppress it is a step that advances the kingdom of God; it is an expression of a full shared life. It is not an invitation to live with resignation, and perhaps with resentment, the situation of poverty, but rather to discover that beyond possessions and power there is the recognition of the person of the Son of God who shares the same life as Jesus.

This small passage changes the whole meaning of life when we decide to make it a reality. It clearly answers the fundamental questions of each one of us and that we sometimes fall into the temptation of answering with material goods. But goods bind and enslave. Today Christ offers us the answer about who and what God is like, with whom he is, where the disciple must place himself, how to find joy and peace, who is truly happy… What do we answer to Jesus? Are we happy? Where have we found happiness? In our life, what do we reflect more: the beatitudes that Jesus proclaims or the “woes” that he condemns?

Our Lord, grant us the uprightness and sincerity of life that will make us worthy of your presence. Purify our hearts and intentions and make us discover the true happiness that we can only find in you. Amen