Happy February. Today is the fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Today’s Gospel is all about happiness. In Bishop Barron’s Catholicism Series he calls the episode about the Beatitudes, “Happy are We”.
St Thomas Aquinas, whose feast day was last Wednesday by the way, famously talked about the things we substitute for God, idols of sorts. He used the example of wealth, power, pleasure and honor (esteem) as idols we sometimes follow instead of God. Today’s Gospel provides a prescriptive for avoiding that sort of thing.
If we are detached from the things of this world and we are humble, we’ll be happy.
If we are mournful and meek we will be happy.
If we focus on righteousness instead of the approval of the world, we will be happy.
If we have clean hearts that focus on God we will be happy.
If we work to bring peace to our world and our neighbors, we will be happy.
And if we suffer persecution for the right reasons we will also be happy.
These things can sound counterintuitive, and they are, in a world that hold up the lives of the rich and famous as the ideal.
Porter Wagoner wrote, and sang, a song called Satisfied Mind. One of the lines was “…it’s so hard to find one rich man in ten with a satisfied mind”. Maybe our relationship with the things of this world is a part of the problem.
With Lent starting in a couple of weeks this would be a great time to think about the Beatitudes and make an effort to make at least one of them a bigger part of our life.
Let’s not wait until Ash Wednesday to figure out what we’re going to give up, add, or work on, for Lent. Let’s take this time leading up to Ash Wednesday to think about what we’re going to do to grow closer to God, and each other, during that time.
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.
I hope you have a great week.
Peace, Bob
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