Blessed are the Poor in Spirit

My friends, I have missed you tremendously, and I'm so grateful to Father Whitestone. He has a full-time job for the last couple of weeks. He has dealt with all the sacrament of needs of our parish. And so I'm greatly indebted to him. You know, I missed some excitement, didn't I? Although it doesn't seem to melt away. This snow and ice storm, record crowds, apparently, at the vigil mass, kind of like the 11 o'clock mass. Every day, I'm so proud of you. You saw the forecast. You heard that we had the dispensation, but you just shifted. You wanted to be able to worship, as the Lord calls us, to worship you. You wanted to be able to receive the infinite grace of the most blessed sacrament. So he shifted into the satan item, so proud of you. You know, honestly, it is to be back. I know people think I'm lying, but honestly, I-- it was wonderful. I loved being with my family. I was looking forward to it. We had a great time. Got to see some college buddies. So that was also even a parishioner bars. I see that in the bulletin station out there. It really was a great time. And of course, Hawaii is such a beautiful place. I think we get like a glimpse, little glimpse of what heaven is like in this paradise. So too is rest in. Just a lot colder. But it's also a little glimpse of heaven, I think. About 30 years ago, I went to another beautiful place. The site of today's gospel, the Mount of Beatitudes, I had great privilege of going to the Holy Land for the first time. Someone that worked for me to ask me, she goes to a mega church, one of these evangelical churches just outside our boundaries, off Route 70. I may know it. Normally my personality, but I said yes. And so I went three busloads of pilgrims. We arrived in Tel Aviv. And it's an overnight flight, right? It's exhausting. So I remember much of this part. I'm sure I had to fly to start some Roman ruins. But went north and had a hotel right on the Sea of Valley, overlooking an extraordinary place. So many important events had occurred. And I woke up the next morning, had breakfast, and then we went to the Mount of Beatitudes. Honestly, we could have stopped there and would have been enough. So amazing, honestly. There's three busloads of 150 folks or so. 12 up the Mount of Beatitudes. Went right past the Catholic church and ran the mountain down the side a bit. And the three busloads stop. We were invited to get out and sit on the side of this slope, facing this beautiful sea of galley while the pastor walked down the hill and stood in front of this cornfield and turned around and faced us with his back to the Sea of Galley. And he was an extraordinary preacher. I don't remember what he said, honestly. But he wanted to demonstrate how the Lord had used, in his words, he had used nature to allow the wind to carry his voice out to the people of God. So they would hear his important sermon on the Mount. He, in fact, invited many of us-- not I didn't go, but invited many to come down and to see how, just a natural voice-- no microphones, of course, back in the day-- just a natural voice. The wind would carry your word up to the people. There was a lot of wows and how cool is that. But the one Catholic, me-- I'm not normally a skeptic, but I just sat there thinking this doesn't seem right. I didn't have my Bible there with me. I would have opened up at that point. But I was scratching my head. This just does not seem right. Wouldn't we have marked the spot? This most important of sermons. Wouldn't we have put a monument of some-- maybe a church. How about that? Well, the church was behind us. The Catholic church was behind us. And so later that night, when we got back to the real mind, did crack open my Bible. And I later read the passage we have here this morning. He saw the crowds. He went up the mountain. And after he had sat down as the disciples came to him, he began teaching them. I think it's a common human sort of experience to try to explain using our natural explanations for supernatural grace. Who cares how the Lord was able to communicate his words to the people of God? But scripture, the inspired scripture, said he went up the mountain. Perhaps that's why that's where the Catholic church built the church. And to be clear, this was not a movement away from the crowds. It was very symbolic. Jesus, the absolute teacher, assumes his authoritative position between God and man, between God and all of creation, the mediator between us and him. Jesus is, after all, the new Moses. Moses went up Mount Sinai. And he brought down the 10 commandments because the people of God were prevented for a bit and from going up the mountain. They couldn't even touch its base. But in the incarnation and the divine person of Jesus Christ, he breaks open that veil. He goes up the mountain, takes his position, and invites his disciples to go up the mountain to him. And he sits down. He sits down, ex-Cathardrod. Otherwise, he takes his throne. He's thrown on the earth, on creation. But there is a beautiful hierarchy of intimacy being demonstrated in this beginning of the sermon on the Mount. First, of course, Jesus, the locus of God's presence in the world. Then his disciples, those direct recipients of his gospel message, his doctrine. Finally, the anonymous crowd. Those that they would spread this message to, including 2,000 years later, all of us. The 10 commandments, we know we're a condemnation of sin. The be attitudes are a beautiful invitation to love. And they are awesomely complimentary, the two. It's important to recognize the Bible is not written in English, so the English word we hear today is blessed. It comes from the Greek word Macario's. Sometimes you hear translations translating it as happy. I think fortunate is the closeness to the intended meaning. For two disciples possess a good that may desire, but cannot obtain. And so they are fortunate. This good is an objective reality. It's not perhaps how we wish things were. True disciples may not, in fact, be ecstatic over their current condition, yet they recognize that they are fortunate. The Lord is telling his true disciples that they are, even amongst suffering, we are in a desirable place. He constipates certain attitudes and states of life that the world scorns. For the Greeks only the gods were blessed. Only the gods were considered the fortunate ones. Because all in the gods were deemed to be immortal. It hence free of the sadness of the mortal life, which always ends in death. But Jesus is declaring those persons who least resemble the Greek gods, those who embrace their suffering and mortality, those that make suffering and mortality their road to the Lord, these are the blessed ones. These are fortunate ones. Jesus is saying to each of us this morning that the most divine road on earth is the path of the cross, because it is the way of love. The least privilege in the eyes of the world are precisely those who have the greatest possibility of using our emptiness, our weakness, and a way man to aduse to entice God to communicate his own life, his inner life, and a strength to us. And therefore, true disciples are blessed, truly fortunate. Jesus invites us in the biatus, in the biatus who just travel the road that he himself has prepared for us by traveling it first himself. In Christ, various circumstances that are accursed by the world, poverty and mourning, this list that is in the biaditudes, are pronounced as blessed, as fortunate to disciples. For Christ's biaditudes are eschatological. In other words, they're directed to the end of time. Jesus proclaims them as blessings, as rewards already secured, even if only dimly for his true disciples. The biaditudes raise our hope towards heaven, this new promised land, this new place of eternal life, by tracing a path that leads through the trials that await each disciple. Blessed are the poor in spirit. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who recognize that they did not will themselves into creation, and are completely dependent upon God for continual existence. The poor in spirit are those who recognize their total need on God. Their total need on God's grace is divine presence. The poor in spirit find security in the Lord. They rely on His mercy and not their own merits or material wealth. For we all know this. We know this to our core, that wealth, all this stuff we are so blessed with, makes us believe, that we are temps us to believe that we don't need the Lord. And we're tempted only turn to Him when we do need something. We wrongly believe that wealth gives us power, that wealth grants some kind of freedom to us. But in reality, and I think we know this, wealth is really a great temptation, perhaps the greatest temptation of our country. It strikes and it crops many of us. The poor in spirit, though, have complete dependence upon the Lord despite, perhaps, great material wealth. They are humble, like Zefania and Paul in today's readings. They both speak of humility today. They trust in God more than themselves. They trust in God more than all the things. It says that Jesus went up the mountain. My friends, our whole vocation is to draw closer to Him. And this, of course, can be difficult at times, suffering is not anybody's wish, not anybody's desire. It is difficult, but we do have to go up the mountain. We have to strive to get closer to the Lord. Well, thankfully, the Lord is very gracious and pouring forth His abundant grace upon us always. We're also supposed to help others up the mountain. Or perhaps even recognize that there is a struggle as part of our true discipleshipness. As many do not know that life is intentionally a struggle. They're unaware of the needs who go up the mountain. They're unable, perhaps, to get close to Him because of circumstances that are on choices that great obstacles are sinned, that they brought into their lives as our responsibility as disciples to help them to come up the mountain. My friends, how do we grow in beattitude? How do we grow into that mindset of really seeing ourselves as the fortunate ones? Well, first and foremost, what we're doing right now, living the sacramental life of the church, especially most of us sacraments, all the sacraments to meditate on our baptism, meditate on our sacramental marriages frequently going to sacraments of panacea, and on, and on. And we're being men, women, and children of deep prayer. We keep talking about 20 minutes in the morning, cup coffee, and the Lord. This is just the beginning. The Lord desires us to encounter Him in the intimate conversation each day. This is how we grow in beattitude. Ask Him to help you be more humble. Ask Him to help you be more poor in spirit. And then in our prayer, we can seek these attachments, these worldly attachments. The Lord will identify them to us and ask Him to help us be more detached from them. Perhaps some of those things, actually literally have to dispose of. But for most of us, it's probably just a mindset. To see them as something we use to get to heaven, something we use to bring about the kingdom, as opposed to something we need to discard. We can grow in beattitude also by tithing. Charity does begin at home. Everyone, everyone, every household that worships here ought to be making a sacramental financial gift of this parish. It's our duty as the disciples to do so. The mass in fact makes no sense to us if we're not to ask our gift, press our air, but also our sacrifice before the Lord. And then we, well, we'll even hear, but on the last Wednesday, the Lord's art with arms giving. And then we're called to serve. We're called, well, charity does begin at home. So we're called to serve here in this local prayer. We did not have enough arches today because of vacations. We need people to sign up and to just participate in the ministries of this wonderful parish of ours. But of course, charity doesn't-- well, it begins at home, but it doesn't end at home. It extends to our neighbor. And as you know, I were getting ready for lunch. It's just days away. Honestly, Ash Wednesday is the 18th. And this is a wonderful opportunity during our Lenton journeys to make a plan. And part of that plan is to allow ourselves to give ourselves a way to help another through the Bishop's Lenton. I'm a huge fan of it. I owe the Bishop's Lenton appeal to my vocation. One seminarian, it's like $250,000 to pay for one man to go through. And that's if he's already got a college degree. Maybe it's more now than the added a year. So I owe the BLA my vocation. I would have likely not walked this journey if I knew I had to give them a quarter of a million dollars first. The BLA makes all that possible for several dozen men for us right now. But it's not just the seminarians. It's so, so much more thousands of families are supported through the BLA, through the very solid Catholic counseling done to Catholic charities. It helps these families find hope. Also to find hope through the people that are struggling with food insecurity and emergency financial aid. And on and on, it helps hundreds of mothers every year choose life through the Gabriel Project. It helps young people use and young adults to encounter Jesus Christ and on and on and on. This year's theme is in Christ we are one. Wouldn't that be nice to be one? Our country is so divided, even our churches are divided at times. Perhaps participating in the Bishop's Lent and Appeal, we can become one with another. For those who generously serve, those who generously give to the BLA become poor in spirit. They truly are merciful. They hunger and thirst for righteousness. They are meek. They become peacemakers. So we inherit the kingdom of heaven. We are called children of God and on and on. My friends, you were so generous last year, they once again raised our goals now $253,000 we can do this. But I think a more important goal, when we fall far short from every year, is to have 100% participation. 100% of the household of our parents to recognize the need to help their neighbor. The church makes us so easy. There's going to be a QR code next week. You can just pull out our phones. It is our duty, after all, to help the other. You know, pray about how you can participate. We'll be talking about this some more, and may God be praised. Amen.