6th Sunday in Ordinary Time Deacon: Rev. Liam Dunne

Published on January 17, 2025

Luke 6:17, 20-26        Blessed are you

What’s so great about being poor, hungry, or sad?  On the surface, these Beatitudes of Jesus seem strange.  ‘Blessed are you who are poor’: surely, it’s better to be well off and well fed, and to enjoy good times – or at the very least, to be comfortable and content?  Are these not the things we strive for in life?  Jesus, however, is not interested in comfort or in maintaining the status quo.  The Jesus of Luke’s Gospel is a revolutionary.  He has come to turn the social order on its head: the last become the first and the least becomes the greatest.  His concern is always for the poor and marginalised.  Jesus’ vision is of a world where the unjust structures that cause poverty, hunger and oppression are swept away.

Sadly, in our world inequalities are more pronounced than ever.  Jesus challenges us to look around us.  When he says the Kingdom of God belongs to the poor, Jesus is not only talking about the afterlife.  He is also asking us if our communities, here and now, belong to the poor.  Is everyone welcomed as a full member?  Do we meet everyone’s needs, or do some people go hungry, either physically or spiritually?  We are called to model our communities on Jesus’ vision of our world.

Pope Francis has offered six ‘new Beatitudes’ for the modern era.  Like the teachings of Jesus, they remind us of the importance of recognising the dignity of all and living in solidarity with those on the margins.  Here they are:

  • “Blessed are those who remain faithful while enduring evils inflicted on them by others, and forgive them from the heart.
  • Blessed are those who look into the eyes of the abandoned and marginalised, and show them their closeness.
  • Blessed are those who see God in every person, and strive to make others also discover him.
  • Blessed are those who protect and care for our common home.
  • Blessed are those who renounce their own comfort in order to help others.
  • Blessed are those who pray and work for full communion between Christians”

© Triona Doherty & Jane Mellet, 2021.  The Deep End: A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Luke.  (Dublin: Messenger Publications.