This was my favorite
Christmas present this year. I guess that's to be expected since I bought it
myself!
It's the four Gospels, the first volume of the beautiful Bible being produced by Word on Fire, the ministry founded by Bishop Robert Barron.
The book features exquisite art, with essays about each illustration, introductions by fine Catholic authors and—no surprise—commentaries by Bishop Barron.
Bishop Barron has been called the Fulton Sheen of the 21st century. For those too young to remember Bishop Sheen, he was a pioneer in using radio and television—the social media of his day—to share the Gospel message.
There’s something else both men had in common: although they were able to communicate with all kinds of people, Catholics and non-Catholics, young and old, they didn’t dumb down the message. Both were serious scholars with doctorates from prestigious Catholic universities in Europe.
You might say they were popular, but not popularizers.
And when I started to read the Beatitudes in my Word on Fire Bible, I also got more than I expected. I found Bishop Barron's comments striking and new.
He starts. however, with the obvious, pointing out how strange these sayings sound. They contradict our experience.
I’ve only felt poor twice in my life, and I distinctly recall that there was nothing blessed about it. And being hated and reviled is surely worse still.
Bishop Barron tells a personal story that sets the stage for his thoughts about the Beatitudes. One Sunday afternoon there was a knock on the rectory door, and he opened it to find a man dressed in an expensive suit, projecting prosperity and confidence.
When the man said “Father, I’ve realized all my dreams,” Bishop Barron responded, “That’s wonderful.”
But it wasn’t. The man said “There’s only one problem. I’m perfectly miserable.”
His insatiable desire for money was an addiction that had robbed his life of meaning and joy. The “blessings” of success were a curse.
This leads Bishop Barron to interpret the Beatitudes in a very fresh way. He translates the Greek word used in the Gospel as “lucky” instead of the familiar “blessed” or even happy. And then he proposes this reading of what Jesus said: “How lucky are you if you are not addicted to material things.”
He carries on in the same way when he looks at “Blessed are you who weep now.” This, he says, we can understand as “How lucky you are if you are not addicted to good feelings.”
I always understood this beatitude as meaning only that we were blessed to weep because God would dry our tears in heaven. That’s true enough, of course, but the bishop draws out another meaning: feeling happy can be as much a false God as wealth if we can’t live without happy feelings, and want more and more of them.
Finally, he gets to the toughest of all these teachings: “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you and defame you on account of the Son of Man.”
When I read that, I figured even Bishop Barron would have trouble finding any good luck in those situations.
But he didn’t. He translates the Lord’s words as “How lucky you are if you are not addicted to the approval of others.”
Bishop Barron says “Status, attention, and fame are among the most powerful… of the false gods who lure us.” He backs it up with his own experience, describing how his need for approval—first from his father, then his teachers, then his professors—became an addictive pattern in his life.
Needing approval is a dangerous thing. It's certainly a bigger spiritual risk for me than wanting riches or good feelings.
And being too concerned for the opinion of others is not only a risk for the spiritual life but for any life of integrity and courage. As Winston Churchill said, “Never trust a man who has no enemies.”
When Jesus says, “Woe to you when all speak well of you,” he is warning us that those who are spiritually free will inevitably find themselves in conflict with those who are still in chains.
Bishop Barron showed me a new way of looking at the Beatitudes, but his conclusion was very familiar. The blessing, the “good luck”, of being poor, sorrowful, or hated is the blessing of freedom, an inner freedom that nothing and no-one can take from us.
The path to such freedom is clear throughout the New Testament, where Jesus tells the rich young man to sell all he has and invites us all to pick up our cross and follow him. St. Paul tells us to take off our old self and leave it behind.
This path is the way of the saints. St. John of the Cross called it detachment, St. Teresa of Avila spoke of surrender, while St. Ignatius uses the term indifference. And the spiritual classic The Imitation of Christ has a chapter titled “How Surrender of Self Brings Freedom of Heart.”
And in our time, the Serenity Prayer used by 12-step groups calls it acceptance: “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…” By not living at the mercy of people and circumstances and events we find the true interior freedom to which Jesus calls us in the powerful words of today’s Gospel.
How blessed—how lucky we are—if we trust that God is at work in everything that happens to us, both the things we welcome and those we don’t.
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