A Reflection for Monday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time
You can find today’s readings here.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. (Mt 5:6)
In a powerful scene from Ethan Hawke’s new film “Wildcat,” Flannery O’Connor, played by Hawke’s daughter Maya, interrupts a fellow writer at a dinner party who is speaking about the Eucharist in amorphous platitudes. “If it’s a symbol, then to hell with it,” snaps Flannery. “It’s a lot harder to believe than not to believe. What people don’t understand is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket when really it’s the cross.”
The kind of “spiritualizing” of the Eucharist O’Connor critiqued is quite common today among believers. The Eucharistic Revival initiative of the U.S. bishop’s conference, which will culminate in a Eucharistic Congress this summer, is a direct response to the trend.
By “spiritualizing,” I don’t mean to disparage the spiritual dimension of reality. I’m referring to a tendency to soften the real and demanding aspects of faith for convenience's sake, to give ourselves a pass or to appear relevant. Grappling with the real presence in the Eucharist is a lot harder than passing it off as a symbol and moving on.
But the real presence is not the only tenet of Catholic faith that suffers from this nebulous spiritualizing. The Beatitudes—which we read in today’s Gospel—are at times robbed of their tangible realities.
Take, for example, “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” A goal of Christian life, we might intuit, is to strive to be holy in a personal way, to live uprightly, to attend Mass, to pray and to be charitable towards others. This will ultimately bring us close to God, and thus, we will be “satisfied.”
This goal is essential and certainly reflective of Jesus’ call to relationship with God. But many biblical commentators, saints and especially recent popes have taught us that “righteousness” might better be translated as “justice,” a justice which demands we take a more tangible, complex step along the path of faith towards action to help build God’s kingdom.
In a commentary on the Beatitudes, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Jesus of Nazareth that, “only when the great inspiration it gives us vitally influences our thought and our action, only when faith generates the strength of renunciation and responsibility for our neighbor and for the whole of society—only then can social justice grow, too.”
An authentic hunger and thirst for righteousness does not find its end in a personal relationship with God. Rather, a personal relationship with God necessitates action on behalf of justice. It’s worth pausing for a moment to reflect on the various injustices plaguing our world at the moment and what our faith demands of us in terms of concrete action and solidarity…
Pope Francis, too, has warned against spiritualizing the notion of justice: “While it is true that the word ‘justice’ can be a synonym for faithfulness to God’s will in every aspect of our life, if we give the word too general a meaning, we forget that it is shown especially in justice towards those who are most vulnerable.”
“If it’s a symbol, then to hell with it. It’s a lot harder to believe than not to believe. What people don’t understand is how much religion costs.” As we reflect on the Beatitudes and the injustices in our world today, and prepare for the Eucharistic Congress next month, let’s remember the concreteness of both the real presence in the Eucharist and the real demands of justice that Eucharistic faith points us toward.
