The Sermon on the Mount Brings Hope

Why is a Christian happy? The answer is simple: he has God. The Sermon on the Mount in today’s gospel (Lk 6:17, 20-26) shows us how happy a Christian can become; for even in poverty or deprivation, in hunger, in pain, in tears, in life’s failures, in rejections, in persecutions, a Christian is still truly blessed. “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for a great reward is kept for you in heaven” (Lk 6: 23). It is always the beyond that keeps a Christian going, even in the most difficult circumstances. It is the hope that beyond the tears of this world there is heaven. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has branded Christianity as a religion of the weak, of the coward, and of the incompetent. It is for him a religion that rejoices over one’s failures and curses those who are strong, successful, and happy. He says, “What has been the greatest sin on earth so far? Surely the words of the man who said ‘Woe to those who laugh now’?” Nietzsche rejects Christ’s promise of the kingdom of heaven. For him what is real is only the kingdom of earth. He says in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go” (p. 13). If I point my finger at the moon, the wise man sees the moon while the fool man only sees my finger. Remember that in the book of Psalms it is written that “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (14:1). Nietzsche once proclaims that “God is dead” (The Gay Science, p. 181). Pope Benedict XVI has these words for Nietzsche: “Jesus’ wide perspective is countered with a narrow this-woldliness - with the will to get the most out of the world and what life has to offer now, to seek heaven here, and to be uninhibited by any scruples while doing so” (Jesus of Nazareth, p. 97). In our present time, the spirit of Nietzsche continues to haunt religion. Today similar criticisms can be found. Secularism goes on attacking organized belief. Fr. John Flynn in a Zenit.org article entitled “Religion in the Cross Hairs: Secular World Attacks Organized Belief,” Nov. 26, 2006), mentions that the English singer Elton John accuses religion to have turned “people into ‘hateful lemmings’.” This comes from the claim that religion is hateful to “gay people.” The article also says that in the United States, Rosie O’Donnell considers Christianity to be similar to a “radical Islam.” And as quoted by Fr. Flynn, an Australian newspaper dated August 15 releases a survey declaring that atheism is strongly happening in most countries with “prosperous liberal democracies.” In Canada, Christopher Hitchens continues to declare his hatred against Christianity. For him, religion causes hatred to rise in the world. Accordingly, “anti-religious books” are too fashionable today. The following can be mentioned: God is Not Great by Hitchens, The End of Faith by Sam Harris, and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Christianity is not against life. On the contrary, the promise of heaven is the fulfillment of life. Fulfillment or satisfaction cannot come from the world. “Blessed are you who are poor; blessed are you who are hungry; blessed are you who weep now; blessed are you when people hate you, when they reject you and insult you and number you among criminals, because of the Son of Man, for with you is the kingdom of heaven. It is a future promise but at the same time an actual reality. Yes, I can agree with Nietzsche that Christians are weak. The poor, the hungry, those who are weeping, those who are persecuted for the sake of the gospel are weak. But they find strength in Christ. Let me put it this way: if you don’t believe in God, then suddenly all your earthly securities fail, where will you go? If a poor man believes in God, so even in his misery there is still joy for he is assured that everything is just temporary. If everything fails, there is still God.
How many today are living in misery? Walking around the streets of Manila, poverty abounds. The sad sight of homeless individuals meets our eyes. And I cannot imagine how many nameless faces are in pain this very moment, everywhere. And these seemingly unfortunate people can find hope only in God. And if there is no God, can there be any hope?

I want to share with you this third paragraph of Benedict XVI’s encyclical letter Spe Salvi:

“Yet at this point a question arises: in what does this hope consist which, as hope, is “redemption”? The essence of the answer is given in the phrase from the Letter to the Ephesians quoted above: the Ephesians, before their encounter with Christ, were without hope because they were “without God in the world”. To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope. We who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God. The example of a saint of our time can to some degree help us understand what it means to have a real encounter with this God for the first time. I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life. Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying “masters” who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of “master”—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name “paron” for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her “at the Father’s right hand”. Now she had “hope” —no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was “redeemed”, no longer a slave, but a free child of God. She understood what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were without hope and without God in the world—without hope because without God. Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her “Paron”. On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter’s lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people. The hope born in her which had “redeemed” her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.”

The Sermon on the Mount brings hope; and if there is hope, there is life.