Posted by The WORD in other words (2018) by Fr Raymun Festin SVD – Catholic Trade Manila
Wednesday 23rd Week in Ordinary Time
In the Beatitudes, Jesus tries to initiate a change of perspective in us. He is teaching us to see things differently, to change our mentality.
Focusing on the second beatitude, “Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh” right away, we notice a striking novelty. In the eyes of the world, those who weep for a loved one who was killed are unhappy. In God’s eyes, they are blessed because it is God who will comfort them.
Pope Benedict XVI, in his book Jesus of Nazareth, identifies two kinds of weeping or lamentation. The first kind is when one “has lost hope, …has become mistrustful of love and of truth, and that therefore eats away and destroys man from within.” Judas bitterly wept after realizing his betrayal of Jesus. He lost hope of being forgiven by Jesus; his weeping led to his destruction.
The second kind is that which leads a person to conversion and resist evil. This weeping heals because it teaches us to hope and love again, as shown in Peter’s grief and sorrow when he realized that he had denied Jesus three times. Peter’s weeping led to him to conversion and to the hope for Jesus’ love and forgiveness.
Another example is the Blessed Mother at the foot of the Cross. This mournful weeping knows how to suffer with the other; it protests and resists evil – oppression, injustice, and corruption. It is a weeping that pleads for God’s intervention in the midst of evil and suffering.
Do we weep for so much violence and injustice around us? Or are we unsympathetic for the victims because they are not among us? Blessed are those weep and resist evil; God will comfort them and give them justice.
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