What does Jesus mean by the word blessed?
The Gospel of Prosperity is a way that a few false Christian religious leaders like to justify the disparity of wealth in our nation. These false teachers rationalize that God rewards those who are righteous with great wealth and power, and punishes those who are sinful with poverty and destitution. This is a false theology of wealth and power. It is baseless in scripture and for lack of a term, it is a pile of hooey. Yet this misguided and false teaching is widely disseminated among the rich and the powerful. These false teachers would say that the rich and the powerful are “blessed.”
The life and words of Jesus define what is truly blessed. Jesus used the gifts he was given to better the lives of those who were most in need. There was no quid pro quo attached by Jesus for any of the miracles he worked for people, whether it was curing an illness or injury, exorcizing a demon, calming the storm at sea, feeding the 5000 with the multiplication of loaves and fish. Everything that Jesus did for others was derived out of a motive of love, not profit. Jesus asked for nothing in return. This is what it means to be blessed.
What determines a person’s state of blessedness is not the person’s economic status. It is not a temporal state of being. Rather, to be blessed is directly linked to one’s spiritual and emotional state. Who is blessed in the eyes of God?
In the first reading, the prophet Zephaniah writes those who seek humility and justice are blessed by God. St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians declares that God has chosen the foolish to shame the wise, the weak of the world to shame the strong, and the lowly and despised of the world, “those who count for nothing,” to reduce to nothing those who are powerful. Those who are blessed, writes St. Paul, boast of nothing but our Lord Jesus Christ.
Those who are truly blessed are those who come to the humble recognition that all good things come from God. All our gifts, all our talents, all our skills are not ours, but that which God has given to us so that we, in turn, can give to those more in need. Like peeling an onion, this requires us to peel from ourselves all the false things people have attached to us. This require for us to peel away all the false things we have attached to ourselves until there is nothing left but the very core of who we are.
Jesus tells us that once we have peeled away all the falsehoods in which we have been clothed, and clothed ourselves only in God, it is then, and only then, when we will experience the kingdom of God, experience comfort, mercy, and satisfaction. It is only then that we will experience true greatness and be able to see God. It is only then that we are truly blessed.
In short, one becomes blessed when one realizes that all good one has originates in God, and as one uses that good for the benefit of others, returns to God.
We often assign the word “blessed” to people who seem larger than life like Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Mahatma Ghandi, and Pope Francis. However, we are all called to be blessed and we know many people who are indeed blessed. If we think for a moment, we will recognize many in our lives who are truly blessed.
Just today, I heard a story about the Greek fishermen from the Island of Lesbos who, in the year 2015, rescued over 500,000 Syrian refugees fleeing the horrific violence of Syria. These fishermen sacrificed their livelihood of fishing to go and rescue the many women, children and men who were drowning in the sea when their flimsy boats capsized and fell apart in the waters of the sea. Many of the women they saved were pregnant. One fisherman was asked in an interview whether he knew these people he was rescuing were Syrians. He said these people were human beings and it mattered not what country they came from. They were human beings in need of help and that was the most important thing for him, something, I am ashamed to say, that we as Americans have forgotten in recent months. These fishermen are blessed. Jesus reminds us today that if we seek to be blessed, we must possess the humility to realize that all good originates in God and must return to God by using the good we have received from God in service to those most in need.
This is best expressed in the Prayer that is attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.
“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.”
