Memorial of Saint John Chrysostom, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
September 13, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091323.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our Gospel gives us a quick and intense course in the upside-down, inside-out world of Jesus Christ. The course is known by various names:

• the Blessings and Woes
• the Sermon on the Plain
• the “other” Beatitudes

But the passage might just as well be called, “The Loving Slap in the Face Wake-up Call”.

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Picture it. The Twelve have just been commissioned by Jesus as his Apostles (refer to yesterday’s Gospel). I mean this is a big deal! They’ve passed the toughest job interview ever … to stand in for God in the world! They probably want to go home and tell their families, “Guess what! I have a new, fabulous job!”

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But then Jesus gives them the orientation manual – the Blessings and Woes – and it’s shocking!

“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.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
and when they exclude and insult you,
and denounce your name as evil
on account of the Son of Man.”

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Really? This is what will make me successful in this new gig?

I am called to honor and accompany those who are poor, hungry, heartbroken, hated, excluded and insulted? THEY are the blessed, the “successful” in God’s estimation?

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Like many of us, the Apostles may have thought success looked just the opposite – a lot of money, extravagant possessions, careless jocularity, universal adulation, and unquestioned consumption of common resources. You know. – a big boat, a lot of fish, an unconscious immunity from worrying about the poor, hungry guy outside the boatyard.

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Jesus turns all of this upside-down and inside-out. He warns that excessive satisfaction with the world’s goods distracts us from true life in God. It hardens us against a loving compassion for one another. It weakens our capacity to receive the immense joy and freedom of life in the Spirit. Jesus calls us to a simplicity of heart that frees us to see and love God in ourselves and others.

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As we proceed through Luke’s Gospel, Jesus continues to teach his apostles its contradictory truth. Eleven of the aspirants absorbed his words, transforming their life in a holy “inversion”. Only one, in the long run, proved resistant.

Where might we find ourselves if we stood among them?

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Poetry: by C. Austin Miles

A little more kindness, a little less creed
A little more giving, a little less greed
A little more smile, a little less frown
A little less kicking, A man when he's down
A little more "we" a little less "I",
A little more laugh, a little less cry,
A little more flowers on the pathway of life
And fewer on graves at the end of the strife.

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Music: A Simple Man – by Lynyrd Skynyrd