Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C
Sitting with my friend Gail, the parish president of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, in a class today about these very beatitudes, she said something astonishing: “Look around this room. There are people here experiencing a greater poverty than some of the people who live on the street. We can’t see their poverty, because they carry it inside.” Ah. So true. But Jesus promises that the kingdom of God is theirs. I wonder if we’ll ever understand how.
Hunger, too, is a terrible experience, and manifests in many ways. I think of the many young people today who are crippled with anxiety. How they must hunger to be comfortable in the world, to have the confidence to drive a car or speak to a stranger. Oh, how I pray that their hungers might be satisfied.
Maintaining the depths of grief for years on end is an experience I dread more than hunger and poverty. It IS a blessing when tears finally subside, at least for stretches of time. Even though it seems impossible at the time, laughter will find its way back to us, and we certainly relish restored happiness more after we have cried what seemed to be endless tears.
And isn’t the experience of being hated, excluded, insulted, and denounced the very thing we would do anything to avoid? But Jesus tells us that’s okay, because people better than we are have been treated the same way. In truth, virtually every ethnic group that’s come to this country has experienced bitter exclusion and hatred. What each of these groups has in common is the promise that God will make things right. What a blessing that will be.
In what ways have some of the trials of your life been turned into blessings?
Kathy McGovern ©2025