When preaching or commenting on the Beatitudes, I think there are three approaches available. First, a comprehensive approach through which you seek to say/write something about all nine of the Beatitudes. Second, the thirty thousand foot overview that is an attempt to draw a singular message from the nine distinct teachings of the Lord. Finally, one can zero in on one or two of these teachings.
Today, I am going with a combination of the second and third. I find even the thought of going point-by-point through all the Beatitudes exhausting. Before beginning, I heard two things today that I like a lot: "meekness is not weakness" and something like poverty of spirit means recognizing that you're not self-sufficient.
As to the second approach, contrary to Christianity in the contemporary U.S., being a Christian means having the courage to be a nobody. This does not mean refusing to be a protagonist. A Christian slogan from years ago presented just this false dilemma: Protagonists or Nobodies.
Let's stick with the dialectical tension inherent to the Catholic et/et (i.e., both/and) and go with being Protagonists and Nobodies. Isn't that Saint Paul's message in our reading from his First Letter to the Corinthians: you're all nobodies chosen by God to make God's glory known? Maybe we can be protagonists by being nobodies because, as we are seeing in real time, it takes solidarity and community to protagonize, as it were.
Be meek and merciful. Also, be a peacemaker, a protagonist. Our first reading from Zephaniah (there's a book that doesn't pop up often in the Sunday lectionary!) makes the point I am trying to make beautifully: "Seek the LORD, all you humble of the land, who have observed his law; Seek justice, seek humility" (Zeph 2:3).
As for the third option, let's focus on being peacemakers. It strikes me as a necessary preliminary to point out that peace isn't merely the absence of conflict. After all, you can have a truce, a ceasefire, and stilll not have peace. True peace requires justice. So, if you want peace, work for justice.
Daniel Berrigan, S.J.
In our present moment, we are seeing many peacemakers, people who, like me, are nobodies, banding together in the face of injustice to bring about peace. These nobodies have shown more courage and determination than our large institutions, including universities, which seem to only care about funding.
Inherent in justice is mercy and inherent in mercy is justice. Peace, therefore, once the conflict is over and justice has been realized, or a more just situation results, requires the hard work of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Peacemakers are God's children. While peace begins with me, the peace of Christ flows outwards, the love of Christ impels. Let's not kid ourselves, Christ is always on the side of the poor, the downtrodden, and the oppressed and might will never make right.
In his 2015 speech to a Joint Session of the United States Congress, Pope Francis invoked the figures of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton. In our present moment, I would add to that list the Jesuit, Daniel Berrigan. These people bore powerful witness, showing us what living the Beatitudes looks like IRL. It's radical, which is why Jesus warned about suffering for living in this perculiar way. Berrigan, Francis' fellow Jesuit, was probably too radical for that setting.
It is people like King, Day, Merton, Berrigan, and whole cloud of witnesses who rebut the devastating critique made quite a few years go by author Kurt Vonnegut:
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
