The "Sermon on the Plain," Saint Luke's parallel to Matthew's much better known Sermon on the Mount.
Blessed are you who are poor...
Blessed are you who are now hungry...
Blessed are you who are now weeping...
Blessed are when people hate you... on account of the Son of Man.
These beatitudes are followed by these woes:
Woe to you who are rich...
Woe to you who you are filled now...
Woe to who laugh now...
Woe to you when all speak well of you...
It should not be necessary to point this out, but it is. These are not eight discrete statements or even two sets of four discrete statements. The statements in both sets are interconnected and the sets are themselves interconnected. Obvious, right? Again, this should be clear. Why do I think it's important to point this out? Because there are people who, advocating for things that are not part of the Gospel, sometimes even contrary to it, mistakenly believe that the disapprobation they experience is the realization of the fourth statement of the first set.
A famous quote by the saintly Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil, Dom Hélder Câmara, suffices to explain what I mean. Dom Hélder once quipped: "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist."
As our first reading from the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah exhorts us, we must learn to trust God. Trusting Jesus, who is the living water, is how you become a strong, fruitful tree instead of a barren bush. We can discuss the relationship of works to faith all day. According to Jesus, you must produce good fruit. His close relative, James, gets this absolutely right in the second chapter of his New Testament letter.
Pope Francis frequently speaks about the sin of indifference toward the poor, the elderly, the marginalized, the traumatized. This is to hit the nail on the head. Hate is not the opposite of love. Indifference is the opposite of love. A Christian cannot be indifferent to the poor, the hungry, or the grieving. As Catholics, we have the Corporal Works of Mercy: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty, visit the sick and those in prison, bury the dead.
Lent is on the liturgical horizon. Maybe this year either in lieu of or along with what you're giving up, I urge you to take up something. Not just anything, but take up a way to engage in at least one of the Corporal Works of Mercy. This is as vital for your spirituality as is prayer.
Any spirituality that can be considered Christian needs to include the fundamental spiritual disciplines taught to us by the Lord himself: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. I think these correlate nicely to the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and love. Prayer corresponds to faith. Fasting relates to hope. Almsgiving is really just another word for charity.
Just as hope is the flower of faith and love is their fruit, almsgiving, love of neighbor (keeping in mind that, as the Good Samaritan recognized, my neighbor is the one who needs my help), ought to be the result of prayer and fasting.
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