Why are the Poor Blessed?
Our first reading from Jeremiah, as well as today’s Psalm, contrasts what happens when we root our identity in the world, in the strength of our flesh, versus investing our selves and hoping in the Lord. The worldly way is like a barren bush in the desert, a salted lava waste. But the one who trusts in the Lord is a tree beside living water, with roots stretching to a stream, green and fruit bearing, even when all around is drought.
Today’s Gospel is a playbook for how to shoot our roots toward the water. But at first it seems like a counter-intuitive, paradoxical Gospel. Jesus says it’s a blessing to be poor and hungry, thirsty and sad, excluded and insulted. Then he says it’s a curse to be rich and laughing, honored and enjoying good food. I was visiting with a friend recently who likes to say that Jesus is the King, but he’s King Backwards, taking what we think is common sense, and flipping it around.
When I wrestle with this Gospel – and honestly the whole question of Christian asceticism and voluntary poverty – I go back to some experiences I have had praying on the streets in Philly.
One of those crosses, after a prayer walk in Kensington.
I knew a priest who would regularly gather small groups for prayer walks in Kensington. Anybody could join him, but he especially liked to take high school students. You would meet in an addiction and recovery center under the El tracks. He’d offer Mass, and then you’d spend an hour or two making dozens, maybe hundreds, of peanut butter sandwiches. Then, in small groups of four or five, you’d take the sandwiches, and also he’d have these big crosses made from rough wood, maybe eight or nine feet long, six feet wide – big enough that it took two or three people to carry them. Each group would also have one person carrying a stash of post-it notes and pens, and another person with hammer and nails.
These little platoons would disperse across the neighborhood, walking the streets of Kensington. Every couple of yards, you’d encounter somebody, and we’d stop to say something like “hello, my name’s Chris. Would you like a sandwich?” And then we’d say, “hey, can we pray with you, for you? anything you’ve got you’d like to pray about?” And sometimes we’d pray for them right there on the spot. Other times, they’d give us a name, or say “my mom,” or something like “recovery.”
On a trip like that, you have some encounters. You see things, you hear things, you smell things. You can’t walk those neighborhoods and ever valorize or sentimentalize poverty and addiction.
But, whatever the situation was, whatever the prayer request was, we’d write it on one of the post-it notes, and then we’d nail that post-it to the cross. After two or three hours, these big heavy crosses would be covered with these notes. The crosses were spikey, with all these nails coming out, but beautiful, all these bits of colored paper, each one representing a person, each one a neighbor we’d met on the street that morning, each one a prayer going up to the Lord.
Most people you meet on a walk like that would be addicts or homeless. You did meet a handful of aid workers too – priests, maybe a nun, Salvation Army. But one thing almost everyone had in common – I’d say more than 90% of random people on those streets, at least the ones coherent enough to talk, would accept the offer of prayer. 95% were friendly and kind, and grateful for the invitation.
Every now and then, this same priest would take a group for a prayer walk around Center City. Mass, a few sandwiches (they wouldn’t need as many in this part of town), the big crosses, post-it notes and hammers. Same idea, greeting people, offering to pray. And you know what? Completely different reception. By several orders of magnitude, many more people not interested in prayer. Many more hostile and skeptical looks. The homeless campers along Vine Street would be ok, but the shopping and office crowd – most of them had no time to pray.
And in that contrast – between the poor in Kensington, and the relatively affluent in Center City – there’s a clue about what Jesus is telling us in the beatitudes.
Modern urban poverty and addiction is miserable, nothing to be sentimentalized. But…when you’re broken, when the game is up and there’s no more disguising your sin and weakness, there is an opportunity for the honesty that makes real repentance possible. And when any of us are in that place, then the Kingdom of God is near. The cracks are how the light gets in.
With the Center City upwardly mobile types - the people trying to hold it together, enchanted by the myth of self-sufficiency - there you are more likely to encounter a hardness of heart, the brittle defensiveness. That is when we are more likely to deny we need a savior.
Hear just a little excerpt from that gospel again:
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.
But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep.
When I hear this beatitude, I hear Jesus speaking on both a supernatural and a natural level.
Supernaturally, Jesus is talking about the mercy and justice that the poor will receive in heaven. In our epistle today, St. Paul says, “If Christ has not been raised” then “your faith is vain….If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.” If we take the supernatural out of our faith, it doesn’t add up. God has something very special – eye has not seen, ear has not heard - in store for the least of these.
But I also think, in the here and now, Jesus wants to invite all of us to be like that green tree, adjacent to the living waters, even when all around us may be salted desert. He is teaching us about detachment, how to avoid one of those Center City tragedies: when, despite being created in the image of God, we become too busy and blasé to notice. God is love, and we’re created for intimacy and communion with God, so we’ve got to let him configure our hearts to be open, to become attentive and reliant on him. When we’re aloof and cool, our hearts are too hard for prayer. Being able to confess our sinfulness and brokenness - this is where the street people in Kensington have something to teach us.
Blessed are you if you’re not addicted to wealth, if you’re free from those anxieties. Blessed are you if you can take or leave the luxuries. Blessed are you if you’ve checked out of the prestige sweepstakes, if you’ve stopped maneuvering to be popular and honored. Anytime Jesus teaches something that sounds hard, if you probe it, it’s always an invitation to freedom, to be strong and rooted in reality, drawing from living water.
It’ll be Ash Wednesday in a little more than two weeks. As we assess what to give up for Lent, let’s think about how we grow healthier roots, how to get real. As we consider what we’re going to give up, what desires and attachments need pruning? We fast to transcend our appetites, to break the cycle of games we play with ourselves. We give alms, sacrificially, not to balance the church budget or meet some fundraising goal, but because we need to open our hearts, detach from wealth.
As we approach Lent, and indeed today’s Eucharist, let’s pray for the courage to make an honest self-inventory. Let’s pray for the grace of freedom, to lay aside everything fake, to become more real in Christ.
P.S. Here's a thought to connect a Sunday homily with the upcoming week at school. Not every morning looks like this when you drive up to school. Sometimes beauty hits you on the head like this, but other days, you have to remind yourself about the reality that shimmers just underneath the surface. But no matter the outward experience, the interior reason we show up every morning for Catholic education, is to equip our hearts and minds. We want to become the kind of people who notice and appreciate what is really real, awake to the presence of Christ, unbound. Fully alive.
