Wednesday in the 23d Week of Ordinary Time, September 9, 2020

The Feast of St. Peter Claver

Luke 6:20-26

Raising his eyes toward his disciples Jesus said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. But woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.”

The four Gospels, written at different times during an approximate period of twenty-five years to distinct audiences, contain eyewitness testimony of a certain few events that took place over the span of about three years.  They do not attempt to exhaustively document our Savior’s every action and word.  St. John explicitly says this could not be done: “But there are also many other things which Jesus did which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written” (John 22, 25).  The Evangelists give us the highlights, as it were, of the life of Jesus.  The Gospels themselves are slim.  The shortest of them, that of St. Mark, can be read easily within an hour and a half.  And yet these accounts have changed the world.  

Now, while the four Gospel writers tend to agree on certain events as being of particular importance, such as those pertaining to the Lord’s Death and Resurrection, as well as miracles such as the feeding of the five thousand, they differ here and there in details of those events.  This redounds to our benefit since it allows us to see these deeds and hear these words from different perspectives, allowing us to probe them and understand them better.  The fact of four Gospel writers also allows us to see completely events which they uniquely present, such as the raising of Lazarus, which occurs only in John’s Gospel.  Finally, it allows us to compare separate but similar events which the distinct Gospel writers report on.

And that is the case with today’s Gospel reading, which in striking ways reminds us of the Beatitudes in the Gospel of St. Matthew.  Both here and in Matthew 5, 3-12, Jesus preaches using the formula, Blessed are the lowly for they are exalted.  Yet, these two accounts do not come from the same event, but rather two separate events in which Jesus preaches the same basic message in nearly the same words in two different locations, perhaps years apart from each other.  Understanding thusly this reading helps us to see how Jesus, just like any speaker, tweaks his message, his manner of presenting it, and the very words he uses, tailoring it to his specific audience, since every audience is unique.  One audience may consist of the fisher folk of Capernaum in the early morning: references to the sea and to sudden changes of weather and to the profession of fishing would make good sense here.  On the other hand, for another audience consisting of the more sophisticated, educated, and complacent scribes and Pharisees in Judea, subtle references to the prophets, to legal practices, and to contemporary politics would make more sense.

We cannot with any assurance say to whom and exactly when the Lord preached the so-called Sermon on the Plain, from which today’s reading is drawn, but we note the differences and prepare ourselves to compare and contrast what we read with the Beatitudes in Matthew.  Here, though the Lord follows the same formula in both cases, we see a greater emphasis on physical rather than spiritual conditions: “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied.”  The Lord here says not, “Blessed are the poor in spirit”, but “Blessed are you who are poor”, as though to say that poverty itself confers a blessed state on the hearers.  Now, the Greek word rendered here as “poor” is the same as we find in the Beatitudes.  It means “destitute”, empty of goods, not merely possessing few goods.  But this physical poverty of which Jesus speaks is a different thing than that which is conveyed by “poor in spirit”.  Likewise, here the Lord does not say, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”, but, “Blessed are you who are now hungry.”  The Greek word rendered here as “hungry” is the same word Matthew uses to describe the physical state of Jesus after he had fasted for forty days and nights (cf. Matthew 4, 2).  Jesus seems to mean that the hunger itself confers the state of being blessed.  

We find a clue to the Lord’s meaning in a phrase which we do not find in the Beatitudes, but only here: “For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way.”  That is, “their ancestors” caused the poverty, the hunger, and the other sufferings of the prophets, and here they, in their descendants, are doing this to you today.  The Lord identifies the members of his audience as the prophets, and he identifies their oppressors as the descendants of those who caused hardship for the prophets.  Specifically, who are these current oppressors? We might recall these words of Jesus, a little later in this same Gospel: “Woe to you who build the monuments of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. Truly you bear witness that you consent to the doings of your fathers. For they indeed killed them, and you build their sepulchers. For this cause also the wisdom of God said: I will send to them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and persecute, that the blood of all the prophets which was shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation, from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zechariah, who was slain between the altar and the temple. Yea I say to you: It shall be required of this generation.” (Luke 11:47–51).  To whom is Jesus addressing these dire words?  To the Pharisees and the scribes of the law.

We learn from this that already those who were then following Jesus were suffering for their doing so, and rather than give up their belief in him, they persisted in their following.  The fact that even during our Lord’s lifetime his followers were severely persecuted is clear from passages such as John 9, 22 and John 12, 42, which speak of them being “put out of the synagogue”, a measure which would result in ostracism, confiscation of one’s home, and loss of one’s livelihood. Jesus tells these people, these followers of his who have endured persecution for his sake, that they are prophets of equal standing and holiness with the prophets of old.  As consoling as his first hearers would have found this, as well as the promise of justice in the future condemnation of their persecutors, it has consoled the saints down through the ages to the present day.  And we have from St. Paul a vivid self-description of the poverty, hunger, and sufferings of one who similarly sold out for Christ: “Of the Jews five times did I receive forty stripes save one.  Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea, in journeying often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils from false brethren, labor and painfulness, in much sleeplessness, in hunger and thirst, often hungry, in cold and nakedness” (2 Corinthians 11, 24-27).

Suffering comes to the faithful believer from the devil and his minions because they fight against the Lord Jesus in the only way they can — through his disciples.  But blessed are those who persevere: “Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven.”

We celebrate today the Feast of St. Peter Claver, a well-to-do Spanish man who gave up his life in order to bring Christ to the wretched African slaves carried off to the New World in the sixteenth century.  He provided physical care for those who had just been unloaded and were sick, starving, and in many cases dying.  He preached to them in simple ways and baptized thousands.  We beg that through his intercession, God may give us the grace to live solely for him.