Posted by The WORD in other words (2019) by Fr Joseph Miras SVD – Canada
6th Sunday in Ordinary Time – C
The Beatitudes are like Leonardo Da Vinci‘s “to do” list. Some of them are: learn the measurement of Milan and its suburbs; get a master arithmetic to show how to square a triangle; ask Graninno the Bombardier how the tower of Ferrara is walled; ask B. Protinati what means they use to walk on ice in Flanders; how to repair a lock, canal and mill; get the measurement of the sun; get an answer as to why the sky is blue; observe a goose‘s foot; and describe a tongue of a woodpecker.
The comparison simply wants to highlight the beauty and the genius of the Beatitudes and the “to do” list of Leonardo da Vinci. Looking at the list, one can only smile at its profane interest — woodpecker, goose, sky, lock, canal, mill, lock, sun, ice, tower city. They tickled Da Vinci‘s imagination and inspired him to paint, calculate, measure and draw or sketch them, presenting them in artistic and mathematical forms and treatises. There was a sense of difficulty in executing what was in his imagination dependent on the way he framed his inquiry but he was able to do it.
The Beatitudes are the same. They are guides for moral living and are difficult to live out. They are simple; everyone knows what poverty, hunger, misery, hatred, violence, exclusion, and defamation are. They are perennial problems in any place on earth and difficult to root out. God, however, will usher in well-being, satisfaction, happiness, love, inclusion, and praise once God reigns.
God will execute the plan if we all collaborate. As St. Augustine said, God can‘t save us without us. The martyrs and the saints are witnesses to these. Holy men and women lived out literally these injunctions. They fasted for days and even months and years, lived in isolation (but never lonely) and in prayer. They were persecuted, tortured and killed. They may not have survived but their endurance was a testament to the character they formed themselves to be.
At first glance both the Beatitudes and Da Vinci‘s “to do list” maybe impossible or just a product of fantasy. But creativity found a way of realizing and living them. This is where we all realize that human creativity has no limits. And it can lead anyone to new creative endeavors and achievements that reflect beauty and human Imagination at work.
Anybody like Leonardo Da Vinci who follows the Beatitudes would appear like a misfit because not everyone does what Da Vinci did, neither does everyone do what the blessed did. But the fascination with the natural world in its many aesthetic and mathematical forms and the desire to live a life in a world marked by wounds and scars can only elicit a sense of marvel about the world we encounter each day and can inspire anyone to do something and make each moment of our lives better. The expression “think outside the box” makes sense in this context.
