*Law and Order sound* The following is based on a true story. Names and information have been changed to protect the innocent.
“Bless me Father for I have sinned, I am terribly angry.” About what? “Didn’t you read what the Cardinal in Mongolia said this week?” Where would I have read that? “Well it was posted all over [my preferred niche, non-authoritative, ideological, politically biased, website here].” Oh, I don’t tend to read that website. What about what the Cardinal said is making you upset? “Well, he said something so liberal/conservative/traditional/progressive!!” What is the Cardinal in Mongolia’s name? “I don’t remember, Father.”
So, you’ve let your anger become so pervasive within you that it’s reached the level of confessable sin, anger against a person you didn’t even know existed and whose name you can’t remember, and who is living, preaching, speaking, and ministering in a cultural/political/ecclesial context that is a literal world of difference from your own? For your penance, please take your iPhone and hit it on your driveway with a hammer 10 times. Now make your act of contrition.
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We are living in the most informed generation in human history. And, paradoxically, perhaps the most misinformed generation in human history. And, almost certainly, one of the most overwhelmed generations in human history. At any hour of the day, we can know what is happening anywhere in the world. Wars, disasters, injustices, tragedies—streaming constantly into our pockets and onto our screens. Some of these things really are disturbing. They should trouble us. But many people today carry a low-grade anxiety, a simmering anger, or a constant heaviness that never quite lifts.
We are not just informed about the world’s pain; we are subtly told we are supposed to feel responsible for all of it, all the time. And I wonder if part of the reason we’re all on edge is that we are simply not built to carry all this, to internalize all this. And to do all this has been to the detriment of our real, actual lived experience here in this particular town with these particular people.
This weekend we are starting several weeks reading through the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel. This is the most comprehensive summary of who Jesus is, what kind of kingdom he is bringing with him, and who he expects his followers to become.
He does not begin the Sermon on the Mount by saying, “Blessed are those who are always up to date,” or “Blessed are those with the perfect, immediate reaction,” or “Blessed are those who manage to carry the weight of the whole world.”
The problem today is not that we care too little. It’s that we are good people who are trying to care about more than any human mind and heart can hold, and we’re slipping; missing what’s in front of us, calling out injustice and tragedy far away but not even seeing the people in front of us, or on the road next to us, or at our own dinner tables.
Dorothy Day once wrote, “Everybody wants a revolution, but nobody wants to do the dishes.”
The Beatitudes restore us to a human-sized holiness, and they are the perfect introduction to the method of Jesus, a method that he expects us to learn and eventually imitate. This was Jesus’ method: “he comes, present, to a small group of people; who then, over years with him, experience him as an exceptional, extraordinary person. They see someone who is brilliant enough to absolutely outfox the Pharisees and scribes, but he’s also completely humble and comes from humble origins. They someone who is so powerful he manipulates nature without even moving, but he’s also compassionate enough to worry about a widow who’s lost her only son, or to worry about a hungry crowd. In other words, they had never seen Genius allied with Humility. They had never seen such authority married with compassion. He was truly everything that they hoped to become themselves, and everything they hoped humanity could be. He was truly too good to be true.” (Helen Alvaré, Day 4 Keynotes, SLS20)
Take just one of them: “Blessed are those who mourn.”
We often hear this morally or spiritually—and that’s right—but there is also something deeply human here. You can only mourn what you are close enough to love. Mourning requires proximity. Relationship. Presence.
When we are constantly exposed to distant suffering without closeness or agency—when tragedy is always near our eyes but never within our reach—it doesn’t deepen compassion. Instead, it produces numbness, anxiety, or paralysis.
I’m mourning this weekend. Many of you have seen the news about the house explosion in Oswego on Thursday. Oswego is not on many of your radars, I realize that. Someone here once asked me whether it is farther from Elmhurst to Oswego or from Oswego to Iowa. But for me, Oswego is my home; it’s where I grew up. (I was voted Mr. Oswego in 2009) And the home that exploded was my next door neighbor. And the news reporting, in the formal way it should, that “two deceased individuals were found in the rubble” means nothing to me, because I know that it was Jim and Virgie, our neighbors; who were grandparents and who loved to garden, and were nice to my mom.
And going home after being there, scrolling through the news about everything else in the world…on the one hand it opened my heart to a greater compassion, but the perspective of tragedy and loss has really affected the way I’m looking at other things.
Jesus Himself shows us this. He lived in a world filled with injustice, illness, political oppression, and violence. None of that was hidden from Him. And yet He was never frantic. He did not heal everyone. He did not fix everything.
He healed the person in front of Him. He wept at one tomb.
Your algorithm says: Pay attention to everything. React immediately. Carry it all. If you don’t, you’re indifferent. If you step back, you’re heartless; don’t you care?
Many people today in this church feel spiritually exhausted, even guilty, without knowing why. They are carrying burdens they were never meant to carry.
There’s an Italian writer named Alessandro Manzoni, who did for the Italian language what Shakespeare did for English, and whose most famous book is called The Betrothed.
There’s a scene in it near the very end where Cardinal Borromeo says to a young priest who has really failed a young couple in his parish, and sent them into a world of hurt. The Cardinal says to the priest, “Don’t you realize? Christ has no one but you to manifest himself, and if you are not too good to be true, no one will know that Christ Jesus is still here.” You have to be the same kind of exceptional humanity or no one will believe that Jesus risen and living, and still calling people to himself.
If we can stand before God, present among us in the person of his Son Jesus, who is truly the model and method of how to live a life in the world that is truly attractive and interesting because it is truly too good to be true, I’m not saying we can let our guard down and just coast into heaven. But I do think that taking time to live with the people who are right in front of us, to get to know the people we work with and see everyday, to cut people a little more slack and learn to receive the slack that others are trying to give to us; show others the mercy we need them to show us; if we’d stop hiding behind the anonymity of unsigned letters in the rectory mailbox, or angry school Facebook groups, or coffee-shop gossip sessions, or anger-filled and incorrect YouTube theologians, or ranty/condemning text conversations about other people in the same room or house as us; I think we’d all be a lot better off.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
Blessed are those who know their limits and receive the news of the world with sincerity, compassion, and the humility to know what is theirs to carry.
“Blessed are those who mourn.”
Blessed are those who allow themselves to see and grieve real losses.
“Blessed are the meek.”
Blessed are those who do not need to control outcomes and people, who set and respect healthy boundaries.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”
Blessed are those who desire what is right more than what is easy.
“Blessed are the merciful.”
Blessed are those who perceive the need in front of them and, regardless of the world’s political categories, enter into the suffering of another.
“Blessed are the clean of heart.”
Blessed are those whose loves are not divided, whose hearts are guided by integrity and tenderness.
“Blessed are the peacemakers.”
Blessed are those who seek peace instead of the last word or the perfect come back.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”
Blessed are those who remain faithful to what is good, beautiful, and true, even and especially when it costs them everything.
“Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.”
Blessed are those who can be misunderstood for love of Christ and still not grow bitter…and who still keep their hearts soft and open.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven, and here on earth, where the kingdom of heaven is truly at hand.
