6th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C (Lk 6:17.20-26) – February 16, 2025
Fr Daniel Antonio de Carvalho Ribeiro, SCJ
We can all agree that everyone wants to be happy. However, if we talk to different groups of people from different places, we will realize that some of them may disagree because they may carry some serious discomfort in their hearts and, deep down they feel they are deprived of happiness. How is this possible? Surely the biggest problem is in the way people look for it. As a response to these circumstances in life, this Sunday’s Gospel presents us with the way to true happiness.
The readings present us with the Gospel of the Beatitudes. Contrary to the text of St. Matthew in which Jesus proclaims eight beatitudes, on the top of the mountain and only for his disciples, in today’s Gospel, narrated by St. Luke, Jesus descends from the mountain, gathering around him a multitude of people and presenting them with four beatitudes and four warnings of false happiness- that when sought as the purpose of our life, lead us only to emptiness and frustration.
Let’s look at these four warnings made by Him:
“Woe to you, you who are rich, for you already have your consolation!” (Lk 6:24). In this first warning, Jesus reveals that money is not a source of happiness. Money brings only relative security, because it is seen as a means that can buy material things and even fame. However, all this has a limit. We can buy the best clothes and material goods, but all this brings limited joy. We can make the best trips, but after a while we will realize that the most comfortable place is the comfort of our home, the bed of our room. Money when seen as a purpose of security and happiness only ends up leading to frustration and regret. It is true that it is a necessary means of survival and comfort, but it does not fulfill the desire of the human being for continuous and eternal happiness.
“Woe to you who are now filled, for you will be hungry! Here Jesus reveals the fragility of happiness sought in pleasures” (Lk 6:25a). There is a maxim that says, human beings seek pleasure and avoid pain. We have to remember that pleasure, like money, are limited and when used in a disorderly way they bring only annoyances and emptiness. Take the example of the prodigal son and so many people who left the safety of the family, even with its challenges, to seek the pleasure of the flesh, personal passion and adventure. We can have joy and pleasures, but this is fragile and fleeting. Pleasures do not bring true happiness because we are unable to live pleasures without limits and all the time. Only the truth brought by God can be experienced without limits.
“Woe to you, that when you laugh, for you will know mourning and joy. Naturally Jesus does not condemn joy” (Lk 6:25b). He reveals to us that earthly affective consolations are also fragile and fail. It’s true, we all have some dissatisfactions in our relationship in our families, church, and work. Sometimes we don’t express it. However, we wish and pray that those people around us show some change. Sometimes we justify this by saying that it is for their own good. In fact, most of them are not bad people, they are human like us and we cannot demand from them the responsibility of being as we would like them to be, always getting it right and making us happy. That would be a huge weight on them that no one could bear. The happiness we hope for, which would be possible with the change of others, can actually be found only in God.
Finally, Jesus says: ” Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets “(Lk 6:26). Here there is a clear allusion to the danger of vainglory, or happiness based on the search for recognition from others. Without realizing it, our mood easily changes depending on the way we are treated. When we are easily praised, we are motivated and encouraged to move forward in our endeavors. When we are ignored, corrected or criticized, there is usually a bitter taste that we are wronged, we are not understood or valued. It doesn’t take much reflection to see that by doing so we let our happiness depend on the way others treat us. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why there are some people who are unstable, moody and does not even possess good humor.
Against this temptation, the thought of St. Therese the “Doctor of Merciful Love and Patroness of the Missions“ becomes timely: “I am what God thinks of me”. How much truth is in this sentence. We are not what others imagine, say or even desire us, even if this must be taken into account. In fact, we are what God thinks of us, because only He truly knows us. For all this, let us renew our faith in the Lord and be clear that seductive human security is incapable of bringing us true happiness. The thirst for human happiness can only be quenched by its Creator when we rest and trust in Him as the ultimate purpose of our existence, but without forgetting to be light for the world, with the certainty that if we love one another, God will remain in us.
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