I CANNOT imagine living one’s life without holding on to something and someone beyond us. Life can be harsh, painful, messy, brutal, and bitter. Thank God we have our family members and friends to express and unburden our fears, anxieties, and frustrations and ask for their prayers and support. Still, we need Someone beyond finite beings and finite solutions’ to life’s challenges. So, we turn to God and his promise of life beyond this world.
Is this why Jesus calls us blessed in today’s Gospel Reading? We’re blessed in the sense that we recognize our poverty in handling and understanding life’s challenges, struggles, disappointments, and mysteries. We’re blessed because we ultimately rely not on human wisdom and efforts but the mystery of God’s plan.
And if we believe in the Spirit of God that still hovers this world and enters our lives, then we know that somehow God’s Spirit comes to comfort, strengthen, and encourage us. So Jesus says in this Sunday’s Gospel (Matthew 5:1-12): “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied.”
To feel God’s presence and assuring love and mercy amid every tragic moment and distress is strengthening. To have it as one family, friends, church, and community is even more consoling. To believe that one’s life should be rooted deeply in God, who is the profound wellspring of life and love, appeases our troubled spirits.
To know the great reward of heaven for our faith, works of mercy, peace, and justice reassures our salvation in Jesus Christ and longing to be with saints and angels in the afterlife, giving eternal praise and honor to our God.
The apocalyptic words and images of the Book of Revelation, which we hear in the First Reading (Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14), encourage us to persevere during times of distress.
“Then one of the elders spoke up and said to me, ‘Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?’ These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the of the Lamb.”
There is not much we can do in the most distressing times except to turn to our faith in Jesus and surrender to God’s will. The Saints demonstrated this virtue in their lives, and they did it extraordinarily.
There are those of our family members who exemplify this kind of faith. Although not canonized saints, we believe that God the Father sees the beauty of their faith and will make them also part of the vision of multitude in the Book of Revelation who would cry out in a loud voice:
“Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Blood of the Lamb.”
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The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Asian Journal, its management, editorial board and staff.
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Fr. Rodel “Odey” Balagtas is the pastor of Incarnation Church in Glendale, California.
