This Sunday we hear Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, which includes not just blessings but woes. Honestly, I don’t see these as a bonus. I know that the Beatitudes are central to Jesus’s teachings, but experientially, I’ve always wrestled a bit with them. They seem to affirm the negative things that happen to us – poverty, hunger, sorrow, persecution. Those don’t feel like blessings to me. He reassures us that these difficult experiences will be reversed in the future. How nice, but what about now, Jesus? And for those of us who may have found a good mood during this pandemic, does that mean we should seek out sorrow? Stop hanging out with your loved ones and find some people who hate you instead.

That can’t be what Jesus means, but the things that make me go hm are often where God’s call lies, so let’s keep going. It often gives me insights into one reading when I can put it in the context of the other Sunday readings, and when I do that now, I notice that the First Reading from Jeremiah also has blessings and curses. These relate specifically to how we trust in God – or not. “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord.” It goes on to compare that person to a “barren bush” that’s planted in lava so it can’t flourish. By contrast, “blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is in the Lord.” This person is like a tree planted by waters so that all its needs are met. Even in drought, it stays green and bears fruit because its roots have continuous access to water. So, to apply this to life, if I live in a constant state of trust in God, I’ll have a reliable source of sustenance. Even during hard times, I’ll be provided for. That sounds great, doesn’t it?

I wonder if, in putting this blessings and curses reading with the Beatitudes, we might gain a better understanding of Jesus’s blessings and woes. I can’t think that Jesus is really telling us to seek out hardship instead of good things. I mean, really. Life is hard enough. We don’t need to go looking for trouble. And, at least for me, if life isn’t giving me concrete things to worry about, then I have plenty of tumult inside my own head if I allow it. Actually, I think this is true for a lot of us. Our distress in life can come from circumstances themselves, and it can also come from our reactions to circumstances.* Sometimes things are about the actual situation – great loss, real threat to health and safety, trauma. Sometimes the problem is simply that things don’t turn out as we’d hoped, and we experience anger, disappointment, grief. There’s much that’s out of our control. That’s just life. We do, however, always have a choice in how we respond.

We can’t control things like job loss or how people react to us, and if we place our hope in the things in life we can’t control, then woe to us when the tide changes and something happens that we don’t like. Everything seems lost. We’re a tree planted in the desert. However, if we’re rooted in God, trusting in God’s care for us, then we don’t see hardship as a total loss. We don’t view it as God’s punishment, blame ourselves or other people, or see it as the end of the story. We might feel hungry, excluded, insulted, or grief-stricken, and it’s okay to name those feelings. However, we also know that God is in our experiences somewhere. We know that after death comes resurrection, as we’re reminded in our Second Reading.

If, in fact, God is inviting us to trust God more deeply, how do we do that? I don’t have a great answer, although I feel like I should. Trusting God is deeply embedded into the spirituality of my community. We call it abandonment to Providence, and what we mean is trusting God’s care for us and for everyone so deeply that we surrender to it. I love this part of our spirituality, but it’s a real challenge. It’s not like I place all my trust in other people, because, honestly, I struggle with that too. However, I sometimes live as if everything depends on me. I can feel adrift and uprooted in the face of hardship, and I sometimes move toward hopelessness rather than hope in God. But then my faith brings me back. My community brings me back. God finds a way, through some avenue or other, to re-root me, to water my barren places, and to return me to the source, which is God’s own self.

You know, both Jeremiah and Jesus draw a strong dichotomy between those who trust God and those who don’t. They make it seem like all or nothing, but I know very few people who are all or nothing. Most people I know fluctuate between trust and distrust, between shallow foundation and rooted in God. And I’m right there too. Maybe this movement is normal. Most people are a complicated, imperfect mix of good intentions, failed attempts, and redirects. Sometimes we get it wrong and sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we react in ways that aren’t helpful, and sometimes we learn from those and grow, and the next time life throws us a hot day in the desert, we dig down into our roots and find the stream of life-giving water.

Life is a series of unpredictable happenings. We sometimes respond in ways that bring us blessings and sometimes we respond in ways that feel like woes. The invitation I hear is to keep growing, learning from the woes and moving toward the blessings. We may never reach equilibrium. We may never respond to poverty or other people’s rejection with delight. That would be kind of weird anyway, and it’s not really the point. The call is to keep moving toward trust in God and relationship with God. Sometimes we do that when we notice our blessings, and sometimes we even grow stronger roots during the hard times. Maybe growth in hard times is a blessing too.  

* Buddhists also teach about this, as do the Stoic Philosophers. If you’d like to join me down that super interesting rabbit hole, you can listen to the Hidden Brain Podcast, “Minimizing Pain, Maximizing Joy.”   https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/minimizing-pain-maximizing-joy/  

For Reflection:

• What are some of the ways that you’re blessed right now?

• What are some of your woes?

• Have you ever had the experience of growing through a hard time? Have you ever, in hindsight, looked back at a hard time and see how it became a blessing?

• As you consider where you are now, where are you on the blessings vs. woes spectrum? More blessings or more woes? Why?

• What do you need from God right now?

If you’d like to listen to the reflection, here you go!

By Sister Leslie Keener

Sister Leslie Keener, CDP is the director of God Space, a community-building spirituality ministry in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. She’s a Sister of Divine Providence with a Masters in Ministry and a Certificate in Spiritual Direction and Retreats from Creighton University. She directs retreats, meets with people for spiritual direction, and serves as the vocation director for her community. She also serves on the Coordinating Council of Spiritual Directors International. She enjoys music, dancing, and meaningful conversations.