FEAST OF ALL SAINTS
Matthew 5:1-12a
Commentary of Fr. Fernando Armellini
A good Feast to all. In the past, the saints enjoyed great popularity. Churches were full of their altars and statues. And we were more appealed to them than to God. Why? We know that God is our Father and takes care his sons and daughters. However, perhaps we feel him rather distant, far from the concrete problems of our lives. Instead, we feel the saints very close to us because, in this world, they had to pass through the same problems ass us, and so we feel them as friends to whom we can entrust our complaints and receive from them comfort and help.
So, it is not surprising that in the face of every difficulty, for every illness, for every problem, there is a patron saint. They are those brothers and sisters who have had to face every problem, the same problem as us, and therefore, we consider that they can understand our pain and anguish. If you have sores that do not heal, whom do you trust spontaneously? In Saint Roque, he also had sores, and that’s why he can understand my pain; if one has eye problems, he turns to Saint Lucy; the one who has gout disease to Saint Blaise. Then, some saints have gone through all our vicissitudes, there is even a patron saint against baldness; there is a patron saint against obesity, against the vice of gambling, kleptomania, and headache.
This rapport, this confidential relationship with the saints is beautiful and should be cultivated. Of course, we do not go to them asking to present a recommendation to God, to work miracles, no, let’s leave the miracles to the doctors. But these brothers and sisters who are in the full light of God show us with their lives how to live the difficult moments, the difficulties that they, like us, have had to go through. To involve us in the evangelical choices, that these holy brothers and sisters have made, today’s liturgy invites us to reflect on the beatitudes proposed by Jesus on the Mount. Beatitudes that place before us the life choices the saints made and that we too are invited to make if we want to be like them, if we want to secure our lives.
What does it mean to call a person blessed? When do we in our world say of a person that he is blessed? We say it when we think that he is a happy person: she is young, beautiful, healthy, successful and above all, she has a lot of money… people say she’s blessed and lucky. But is it true? Will those things be enough to make a person happy? In the Bible, to call a person blessed means to compliment him; it means to say to him ‘Well done, you’re a successful person.’ What’s the problem? It’s about making it clear from whom you want to receive this compliment.
If you want them to say that you’re blessed, that you’ve succeeded in life, and the one who’s telling you according to the criteria of this world, according to the pagan ideals of our society, shared also unfortunately, by many Christians, it will be enough for you to do the opposite of what you will soon hear Jesus propose. You can be sure that if you do the opposite of what Jesus tells you, people will admire you and say, ‘This is a successful man’ and envy you; if you accumulate money, vacation houses, people will say, ‘What a happy person – he has houses on the beach, luxury cars.’
Let’s be careful; it is not right for Christians to hear proclaiming ‘blessed,’ ‘happy’ the one Jesus says is a loser, the one who has made a mistake in life, the one who has accumulated goods. Jesus says, ‘Woe to you, you are a loser.’ Let Christians be careful not to use the language of the pagans. If we want God to shake hands with us at the end of life and say, ‘Congratulations, you’re a saint, you look like the saint that is Jesus of Nazareth,’ then we must embody those Beatitudes which we shall soon hear pronounced by Jesus. Let us listen, first of all, to where the evangelist Matthew describes the proposal of a blessed person made by Jesus:
“When he saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying.”
In life, people seek only one thing: joy. Everything they do is to be happy. The problem is that they can miss the target. In Hebrew, sin is called ‘hatat,’ which means to miss the mark. For example, the person who seeks joy but only finds pleasure is disappointed. This is the sin that is not born of wickedness but of ignorance. God will never punish the sinner because he is a poor wretch who has the wrong goal, and the Lord will only want one thing, that this son of his may find joy as soon as possible. Today, Jesus reveals to us the secret of joy. In the end, it will come down to whether, ultimately, we will trust his proposal, or we prefer to continue with our cunning to reach joy and sin, to miss the target.
The evangelist Matthew says that Jesus made his proposal on the mountain. Christian devotion has identified this mountain with the hill that dominates Capernaum (you see it behind me); among those trees in the background, there is also the church of the Beatitudes, which I will show you soon. The place is very impressive, but the mountain that Matthew mentions is not a material mountain; it is not the one behind in the picture. How is it that this image of the mountain is often repeated in the Bible? In the cultures of all peoples of antiquity the seat of the gods was imagined on the top of the mountains. We remember Olympus, for example, for the Greeks. The mountain protrudes from the plain, and it is as if it penetrates the sky so that to climb the mountain is to approach God, to find divinity. In the Bible, we find Moses, who climbs the mountain when he wants to meet God. Elijah goes up the mountain, and Jesus also takes Peter, James, and John to the mountain because it’s on it where a certain experience of God is made, and God’s thoughts, feelings, and judgments are assimilated.
Let us try to develop this precious symbolism of the mountain coming out of the plain. In the plain life is regulated according to the criteria developed by people, what they have been invented, and that for God is nonsense. These criteria are easy to enumerate; we all know them very well what are the opinions circulating in the plain to get joy: ‘What matters is health … is really the only thing that matters; what counts is success. Happy is the one who has a big bank account; Happy is the one who can travel, I’m only interested in sex; I don’t consider sacrificing myself for others.’ These are the suggestions one hears on the plain; it is the standard way of reasoning and the wisdom of the people.
Will he who pursues these ideals attain joy? Not to run the risk of betting one’s life on erroneous values. and thus lose the opportunity to be happy it is wise to detach oneself, at least for a moment, from the plain and to climb the mountain to know how God thinks and what his beatitudes are. Then, we will be free to return to the plain to trust again in people’s way of thinking or to believe a little in the way that Jesus proposes, but then, to avoid regrets, we can always go back to the plain… we can always do it, but since we are smart, let’s at least climb this mountain… to hear from the mouth of Jesus how God thinks. Let’s listen to the first beatitude that he proposes to us:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Let’s be careful and try to correctly interpret this beatitude that has been interpreted in many ways. We have, for example, a tradition of the Church which justifies the following interpretation: ‘One can be even very rich, accumulating goods, but if he has detached his heart from these goods… and has given much alms, cares for the poor, is a good rich man….’ No. Jesus proclaims the poor blessed.
Who is the poor? It’s very simple: The one who has nothing. There are two kinds of poor: one who has become poor because some misfortune has befallen him: an earthquake, a disease, a war, a flood, who has destroyed his house and his fields and is left with nothing… Is this the poor man proclaimed blessed by Jesus? No. This interpretation would be absurd, misleading, and contrary to the Gospel. In the Old Testament God promises his people that ‘no one among you shall be poor,’ and in the Acts of the Apostles, it is stated that in the early church, the brethren shared all goods, and no one among them was poor, because the world that God wants is not a world of the wretched but a world in which all his sons and daughters are happy.
This is not the poverty that is proclaimed blessed. Jesus does not address to the disinherited, to the beggars of Capernaum, he addresses his disciples. Blessed are the poor, not the ragged and miserable, but the poor in spirit. What does it mean in spirit? The impulse that we feel instinctively within us is the one that drives us not to deprive ourselves of our goods and become poor but to keep them for ourselves and accumulate them more and more, and we never have enough, not for ourselves, our children, our grandchildren, or our great-grandchildren.
This is the impulse that we feel instinctively. The spirit takes us in the opposite direction. That is to say, to divest ourselves of these goods, not to keep them for ourselves but to give them to the needy, to the poor. Blessed is the poor man who allows himself to be guided by the Spirit and does not retain for himself the gifts that God has placed in his hands. Blessed is he who, at the end of his life, is left with nothing because he gave all that he had to the poor; he who has not given all, when he arrives at the customs post, what he has not given is taken from him and is lost forever because it has not been transformed into love. It is love that remains.
Who is the blessed one? It is Jesus of Nazareth who was left with nothing because he gave his whole life, he kept to himself not a moment of his life; everything was a gift. This is the blessed one to whom the Father in heaven says, ‘You are truly my son; you have built the kingdom of God.’ The promise made to these poor in spirit. I repeat, not to those who have been stricken by misfortune, no; he is poor in spirit who has been touched by the life of the son of God, which has been given to him by the heavenly Father, and therefore, it is a life that leads him to love and to give his all.
What is the promise? “The kingdom of heaven is theirs.” The kingdom of heaven is of these poor, not paradise. When you become poor out of love, moved by the Spirit, you belong to the kingdom of God. This is the first proposal of joy that Jesus makes to us. Let us listen to the second:
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
For many Christians, even today, it is easier to associate God with suffering and pain than with joy and happiness. There is a whole spirituality of the past that invited to offer sacrifices to God, to endure with much patience one’s sufferings, the crosses that the Lord sent. So, the beatitude would be this, ‘Blessed are you the afflicted, that is, those who have sufferings to offer to God’. This spirituality has led many people to turn away from the Church and consider Christianity the enemy of joy when the Gospel is exactly the opposite. It is the announcement of joy and happiness.
What mourning is Jesus talking about? It is not the affliction due to some misfortune. God does not want pain; he does not want misfortunes. The affliction of which Jesus speaks is that which he experienced, it is that sorrow so strong that it manifested itself in weeping when he realized that his people, whom he loved with madness, rejected his proposal of the new world and that, therefore, they were inevitably going to ruin and he burst into tears. This is the affliction that the Blessed One feels.
Where does this affliction come from? From love. Blessed, says Jesus, is he who loves so much as to burst into tears when the joy of the kingdom of God is rejected. If we turn our eyes to the world, what do we see today? Wars, violence of all kinds, injustices, falsehood, hypocrisies; we see a world that boasts of having excluded God from human coexistence. In the face of this reality, one could disengage oneself and focus on his affairs and try to feel comfortable, and then he would not suffer, he would not cry, he would not be afflicted… but he would not be blessed because he would not show love.
Blessed is he who suffers because he lives with passion the commitment to build the kingdom of God and a humanity where all are sons and daughters of the one Father and live as brothers and sisters. The sadness of the blessed one does not come from the fact that he feels bad, but from the fact that in the world, things are going wrong. And at that moment, what is the temptation? To resign oneself in order not to suffer, to become disinterested in others, to withdraw into one’s little world, and to drop one’s arms. If the evil one convinces you that the new world is a dream, he has won.
The promise of those who continue to love even if there is weeping is, “they will be comforted.” God is on their side; he is on the side of those who love even though they feel pain. God will console them; the new world will also be born with their cooperation. Let us listen to the third beatitude:
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.”
The adjective ‘meek’ evokes the image of a calm person who does not react to provocations. Is this the meek person Jesus is talking about? He indeed avoids all forms of conflict, but he also reveals a relatively weak personality.
What does this beatitude of the meek mean, then? To understand it, we must refer to Psalm 37 because Jesus did not invent this beatitude; he took it from this Psalm which he undoubtedly knew by heart because it shows that he had assimilated all this spirituality of meekness present in this Psalm. It speaks of a man who never yields to temptation to react with violence. He says, ‘Turn away from anger, lay down your indignation, do not become irritated because you will end up doing evil, you will increase the evil instead of remedying it.’ This is ‘wrath’. The Bible often speaks of God’s wrath, which is his love. It also speaks of man’s wrath, which is dangerous because it is an impulse that God puts in us, and if one does not feel anger in the face of injustice towards the poor, it is a pathology. The problem is that we can lose the control of anger, that instead of pointing us only to the duty to intervene, it leads us to attack, thus increasing the evil instead of solving it.
Let us be careful, then. Meekness is not an invitation to resignation, it is the right way to react when we see an injustice. Let’s observe that this beatitude comes after that of those who mourn, of those who suffer because they see that things are not going according to God. The first temptation was to disregard things going wrong because one does not want to suffer; this is the first temptation. The second temptation is to get angry and think of resolving the conflict with aggression and violence and thus, add more evil to what already exists. Jesus is the meek one, and, indeed, he has applied this adjective to himself, “Learn from me that I am meek and humble of heart.” He lived dramatic conflicts with the political power, with the religious power, but he lived them with the attitudes and the feelings that characterize the meek, that is, as those who fight for justice without ever adding to evil.
The promise to the meek: “They shall possess the land.” Let us read well, not ‘paradise’ but ‘the land.’ The land is the promise that they will become the builders of a new earth with God. Today, we see that the land often belongs to the violent, arrogant, selfish, and those who spread a hedonistic culture. God says, ‘With your meekness, God will build the new earth with you.’ Let us now listen to the fourth beatitude:
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.”
What righteousness is Jesus talking about? Let us be careful because the term righteousness is very dangerous because it is equivocal. Remember that the guillotine was called ‘the wood of justice’ because it executed. That’s how they did justice, and when a criminal was imprisoned or even sent to the gallows, it was said ‘now justice has been done.’ I remember a governor who signed the death sentence of a criminal who had killed two police officers and did it with the fountain pen that belonged to one of them. After signing the death sentence, he put down the fountain pen and said, ‘Now justice has been done.’
Is this the justice that Jesus wants, that we yearn for as water the thirsty or bread the hungry? The answer is certainly No. Let us be careful because as this is the righteousness for many, they apply it even to God; they cause him to do this justice, which is vindictive, to make those who have done evil pay. What justice is Jesus talking about? It is about the plan of love God wants to carry out in this world; this is the justice he wants to establish. The justice of God is that all become aware that they are his sons and daughters and that all are brothers and sisters and to live sharing goods, to feel as their own the pain of those who are next to them, to be capable of forgiveness to turn enemies into brothers. This is the justice we should long for. Blessed is the one who wants to realize this righteousness and longs for it like water for the thirsty one who walks in the desert. These are the basic needs that Jesus takes as an example of those who want to establish in the world his righteousness.
The promise: “They will be satisfied.” Also, here, the danger is to think that this justice is a dream of Jesus of Nazareth. No, says Jesus, they will be satisfied. Let us now listen to the fifth beatitude:
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”
In our language, we tend to identify mercy with compassion. When we say that a person is merciful because he knows how to forgive, he is magnanimous; he does not second the impulse that leads him to make pay those who have done her wrong; she knows how to be always indulgent. And we also apply this mercy to God so that God is the one who, in the face of the evil that we commit, always knows how to forgive, but this mercy in God has problems because it is not by justice. If God is a just judge, he cannot be merciful, and so understood the rabbis, who could not reconcile these two aspects of God: his justice and mercy. Putting them in agreement is impossible; one or the other must disappear.
This justice that reflects our justice must disappear from God, our way to judge. God is only mercy. ‘Hesed’, in Hebrew, means unconditional and faithful love because if God is a just judge, he cannot be merciful. God is merciful in the sense that no sin, no rejection of man, can turn him away from this passion of love. The gold of which God is made is love, and it is pure gold; there is nothing else in God. How is this mercy manifested in God, that is, this unconditional love we see in Jesus of Nazareth?
We capture it in a parable which is that of the Samaritan. The Samaritan is Jesus; he is the one who met the humanity that had fallen in the hands of of the bandits and that remained half dead, and in this Samaritan is reflected also the merciful behavior of the man who resembles the Father in Heaven. What are the moments in which mercy is manifested in this Samaritan, who is Jesus and who wants to be as merciful as God? There are three moments in which one sees whether one is merciful.
First moment: he sees, he realizes that the other is in need, he is not insensitive, he does not look away, doesn’t try to distract himself, thinking that as long as something is good for me, he can look to the other side. The first moment when the merciful one manifests is the one whose eyes are open, there is no need for the other person to cry for help; he sees the need for his brother. Second moment: He feels compassion, and he pities, i.e., he suffers with, ‘esplankenísei’ in Greek means that he feels as his own what is happening to his brother in need, and it is this inner impulse of love that compels him to intervene. The third moment of mercy: When he has seen the brother who is in need and can do something, he intervenes immediately. This is the mercy of which Jesus speaks to us in the beatitude. Those who are in tune with the mercy of God and Jesus of Nazareth; therefore, these sons and daughters of God are in tune with his love, they will find mercy. It does not mean that God will turn a blind eye to their sins; no; it means that these people are in tune with the heart of God, which is love and only love. Let’s listen now to the sixth beatitude:
“Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.”
For us, the heart is the seat of the emotions and feelings, but for the Semites more than the emotions and feelings, the heart was the center of all the choices, of all the decisions. The Semites decide with the heart. And the heart can be pure or impure. We understand by ‘pure gold’ that which is not mixed with other metals; ‘pure coffee,’ there are no substitutes; ‘this is the pure truth,’ there is no lie; ‘this is pure fantasy’ means it has no connection with reality. When is the heart pure? When there is only God who dictates the choices that direct all decisions that are made. Impure is the heart where there is a jumble of gods and idols giving orders. When not only God is in the heart, then many choices will continue to be based on money giving its orders, of pride, of greed, of moral licentiousness.
The promise to those who have a pure heart: “They will see God,” that is, they will experience God. Sometimes, non-believers ask us, ‘How can I believe in God?’ We think that we have to convince them with reasoning; the problem is that they cannot see God as long as they have this disorder in their heart. First, they must purify the heart, and only then can they experience God. Let us now listen to the seventh beatitude:
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
This beatitude translated as ‘peacemakers’ does not give the real meaning. In our way of talking means those who always try to get along with everyone and who also try to make peace between people. In the time of Jesus, the rabbis said, ‘Hasot Shalom,’ that is, to build peace between families and people was a very worthy work before God, but this interpretation is reductive.
The Beatitude of Jesus has a much broader meaning. First of all, the term that is used to proclaim these blessed persons are εἰρηνοποιός – eirenopoiós’, which is composed of two Greek words: ‘eirene’ meaning peace, and ‘poiéin’ meaning to make. Blessed, therefore, are those who labor to build peace. The Greek word εἰρηνοποιός only appears here in the entire New Testament, but it was in common usage in classical Greek. Especially the emperors called themselves εἰρηνοποιός, i.e., artificers and peacemakers like Caesar and Commodus; they presented themselves as ‘the peacemaker’ of the world, especially Augustus, who, with his legions and many crimes, had brought peace to the whole empire and presented himself as the peacemaker. Virgil in the Aeneid, addressing him, pronounces that famous phrase, ‘Remember, O Roman, that to rule the world with your dominion, your task is to enforce peace.’
Are these the peacemakers that Jesus proclaims blessed? The answer is No. What does Jesus mean by εἰρηνοποιός, peacemakers? The Hebrew term we know well is שָׁלוֹם – Shalom, which presupposes that there be no disagreements or wars; the peace Jesus speaks of is much broader; it indicates the fullness of life; indicates the presence of all those goods that enable people to be happy. This is the order of the world willed by God. This is the peace of which Jesus speaks. Those who creates the economic conditions, social, cultural, and political conditions that foster this peace are the blessed of whom Jesus speaks.
The promise: God calls them his children. “They will be called children of God” means that addressing them, God says to them, ‘you are truly my children’ because what God wants is this peace, that is, well-being, joy, happiness and life for all his sons and daughters. When these conditions are built that allows all to be happy God turns to these builders and says to them, ‘You are truly my sons and daughters.’ Let us now listen to the last beatitude:
“Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.”
We have climbed the mountain to listen to the proposal of a happy, blessed life made by Jesus. We are glad to have heard it and also to have understood this proposal. However, we cannot remain always in the mountain, we must go down to the plain, we must go back among the people who reason differently, follow other criteria and values, and choose other beatitudes. And that’s why we want to ask Jesus how we will be received there in the plain and find ourselves among the people if we will be coherent with what he has taught us.
And Jesus answers us with an eighth beatitude: ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,’ that is, persecuted because they want the new righteousness, the righteousness of the kingdom of God, to be established in the world. It tells us clearly, keep in mind: ‘You will not have it easy; they will insult you, they will persecute you, they will say all kinds of evil against you because of me.’ Therefore, there is a price to pay if one chooses the beatitudes of Jesus. It is as if he says to us, ‘Keep in mind that when you see your lives so different from theirs, when they hear you speak of gratuitousness, of sharing of goods, of attention to the least, to the poor, of a relationship of faithful, unconditional conjugal love, they will oppose you or at least mock you, but I assure you that you will be blessed.’
He gives two reasons for this blessedness; the first for those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake is the kingdom of heaven; and then ‘great is your reward in heaven.’ When we hear of heaven, our thoughts spontaneously run to the reward the faithful servants will receive in paradise, in the afterlife. No, let us note well, the two promises made by Jesus are in the present: of the persecuted ‘is’ the kingdom of heaven, ‘now’ belongs to them the kingdom of heaven, and then, great ‘is’ their reward in heaven. Heaven, not paradise, it is the kingdom of God, the new world which has already begun here and is present in all who live the beatitudes of Jesus.
The persecuted are not happy despite persecution but because of the persecutions they suffer, and they are invited to rejoice not because one day the persecutions and sufferings will end, but because ‘today,’ being persecuted you have the proof that you live differently from others, not according to the criteria of the old world but according to the new righteousness, and it is from this deep and intimate conviction from which derive in the believer the joy and peace promised by Jesus.
I wish you all a happy holiday and a good week.
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