Blessed are those who have to rely on God for every breath they take.

The blessedness of the beatitudes are for people who have invited Christ into their daily lives.    Their blessedness is an inner blessedness, an inner joy that comes from trusting and rejoicing and being grateful for God’s unending love for us.  In the beatitudes, we see the heart of God.   Saints are people who are aware of God’s great love for them, and are witnesses of the love of Jesus in the world.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the poor in spirit…The poor in spirit are those who know that stand in need of God’s redeeming love.  Our wealth doesn’t come from are material assets; our real wealth comes from in God’s healing love for us.  To tap into God’s unending love for us, we need first to recognize our need for God’s grace.  This is to say we need to recognize our poverty of spirit which moves us to find an inner blessedness that is God’s gift to us.  Blessed are those who have to rely on God for every breath they take.

The greatest spiritual deception of all is thinking we are self-righteousness; that our spiritual will power is the source of our holiness.  That is the biggest illusion of all.  The spiritual life begins with our need for God.  Left to ourselves, we are poor; we stand in need.  The grace of this situation is that it can lead us to trust not in ourselves, but to trust in God.

And so the beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.

Reflecting on the beatitudes is a wonderful introduction to the Jubilee Year of Mercy that Pope Francis has announced for our Church.

In preparing for the day that I was ordained a priest, I had 12 years of seminary formation – four years of high school, four years of college, and four years of theology.  I spent a lot of time in the classroom.  When I think of the seminary formation of the first apostles, Jesus enrolled them in the school of mercy.  The disciples of Jesus found themselves in a continual classroom for learning how to be merciful.  They listened to Jesus preach about forgiveness.  They watched as Jesus healed the sick, expelled demons and forgave sinners.

Yet the deepest lessons for the disciples occurred when they themselves went through a heartbreaking baptism of mercy.  The Gospels tell of the disciples’ constant failure to understand Jesus and his mission.  They think they are on the way to power and greatness.  They are dismayed when Jesus predicts his suffering and rejection in Jerusalem. 

The whole story reveals that the disciples had to experience their own need for mercy so that they would be prepared to preach it to others.  For example, Peter, the leader, undergoes a profound failure, denying any relation with Jesus in his hour of need. 

St. Paul, like St. Peter, is prepared for his mission as Apostle to the Gentiles by his own wrenching experience of failure and conversion.  Again, it might seem strange that God would choose an enemy of  the church to be its greatest evangelist, until we realize that Paul’s conversion was essential to his conversion.

The baptism of mercy of Pete and Paul was to recognize the left to their own devices, they were on a sinking ship.  Conversion happened when they made the leap of faith in trusting in God for every breath they took.

It was so in the time of Jesus.  Her was welcomed by sinners but rejected by respectable people, especially religious leaders.  They saw Jesus as undermining morality by being too easy on sinners and lawbreakers.

In our day, Pope Francis has stated in his Apostolic Exhortation the Joy of the Gospel that this same resistance to mercy has in many ways come to characterize the institutional Church.  Pope Francis seeks to revitalize the Church by insisting we be a Church of Mercy;  we are to share the joy of the Gospel with one and all. 

Pope Francis is calling the whole church to a conversion that comes from our poverty of spirit.  Blessed are the poor in spirit.  Blessed are those whose wealth comes from their trust in the merciful love of Jesus.

Francis has preached the Gospel with his smile and his eagerness to embrace God’s people.  The pope has also preached the Gospel by making mercy our highest priority.  The leadership of Pope Francis helps us to discover the merciful love of Jesus.

The parables of Jesus are stories of mercy.   The Parable of the Prodigal Son identifies the deepest obstacle to mercy.  Those who feel they have never received mercy themselves find it hardest to let God give it to others.  This can be seen in the behavior of the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son.  He wasn’t able to celebrate with his younger brother because he was not aware of the father’s merciful love for him.

Mercy comes from mercy.  Our mercy to each other comes from God’s mercy to us.

What about ourselves?   What about our Church?  How aware are we that we are the generous recipients of God’s merciful love?  Are there ways we are reluctant to share the merciful love of Jesus with others?  You can be sure if we are reluctant to be a Church of mercy, a Church extravagant in witnessing to God’s unconditional for one and all,  we ourselves need to go back to the first beatitude.  Blessed are the poor in spirit.  Out of our poverty, out of our brokenness of spirit, may we experience the conversion of relying more fully on God’s grace.  May we receive the grace of experiencing more fully of God’s merciful love that is extended to us.  Blessed are they who rely on God for every breath they take.