The 212-area code is Manhattan, and it’s a status symbol as one of the most recognizable area codes in the United States. It’s considered more authentic than the more recent 646, 332 or 917 area codes for Manhattan.
With a 212 Manhattan phone number, you’re sure to turn some heads, stand out from the sea of competitors and increase your reputation. However, it’s discontinued unless you buy one, they’re worth anywhere from hundreds to several thousands of dollars which people scour websites for.
In contrast, most of the people in St. Luke’s cities were poor, non-elites: peasants, artisans, slaves, day laborers, and beggars.
And unlike a 212-area code, the beatitudes are about true and eternally lasting happiness, how to find it and what it consists of.
There are 4 blessings and 4 curses. Perfectly paralleled. For every blessing, there is a curse which is a “woe.” Just like our weaknesses are often the flip side of our strengths. Blessed means there is something good about your situation. “Woe to you” is bad.
By seeking riches while others are poor economically and in need, especially living in the desert surroundings; to be full of an abundance of good food while others go hungry, to laugh when others mourn, to seek to be popular when others are persecuted. These are all woes.
But you can turn the woes around. Blessed are you who have money but help the poor. Blessed are you who have lots of food and share some. Blessed are you who laugh now in the joy of Christ and good conscience but also who delight in others. Blessed are you are affirmed but also affirm those who often go unnoticed.
St. Luke did not say that Jesus condemned those whose lives were happy, who enjoyed honor in society, who were learned, or who had status. He did not banish them from the map of God's covenant members. Rather he rearranged the lines of the map so that those formerly excluded from the map were included and those on the outer circles of the map were now closer to the center. 1
Commenting on Psalm 33 Thomas Aquinas speaks of rejoicing over the benefits of grace hoped for, but it is the grace received here-and-now that ushers in jubilation and inexpressible gladness.
The beatitudes seem like a negative, but it can be seen as a positive by a “different level of consciousness,” or awareness by the Holy Spirit.2
Thus, St. Luke includes an adverb “now” to mean that they are blessed now. Blessed are you who are materially poor, who nonetheless hope and believe in the promise of God for the kingdom of God is yours now. The “now” speaks of a quality of the soul-- when the body is subjected to the soul. The body obeys the soul’s higher faculties of reason and will. The Holy Spirt is an internal condition that gives the hope in God for the poor of the land since they hope for a salvation through none but God alone, which is the context in our First Reading, where we hear, “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings.”
Heaven is not just up, but in.
Part of what makes the beatitudes so arresting is the challenge of seeing this future as belonging to those to whom it is promised.3
Jesus’ promises have the effect of pulling the future into the present “ahead of time.” As Richard Lischer illustrates, beginning by saying that a promise cannot be detached from the one speaking it, and the one making the promises is Jesus Christ:
“If I am out of work, and the owner of the local grocery store promises me a job in two weeks, whether or not I now adopt a stance of hope in the world depends on the character of the one who promises. Does he have a history of faithful actions from which I can abstract the quality of faithfulness and ascribe it to him? Are there testimonies to his faithfulness? If so, my life has already changed. It changes with the issuance of the promise.”4
“Does Lischer’s would-be grocery worker have a job yet? Technically, no. He will have a job in two weeks; even so, this afternoon he twirls his wife around the kitchen when he arrives home. Tonight, he sleeps without the usual interval in the wee hours spent staring at the ceiling, awake. Next week, he makes sure he has something in which to pack his lunch to work each day. The day before the job starts, he lays out his work clothes. His life has already changed. All of these observable actions flow from a promise made by a trustworthy grocery store owner.”5
Besides the blessings “now,” there is also an apocalyptic description of a great reversal of how things will be.
Earthly conditions and roles will be reversed in the new age to come. St. Luke says that the present miserable conditions will certainty reversed, similarly to the Blessed Virgin Mary who even speaks about this coming reversal in her Magnificat.
Right there, in Elizabeth’s living room, Mary speaks of the future as its already past: God has scattered the proud in the conceit of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.
The diminishment of poverty, hunger, weeping, hate, exclusion, and denunciation will ultimately be transformed in blessings. And these future blessings will far outweigh current hardships. God will reverse the trials of who those believers who have remained faithful during present distress.
For us, we must choose on which side of blessing or woes will be.
King David fed the hungry whenever he could. 1 Samuel 30:11-12 says, “They found an Egyptian in a field and brought him to David. They gave him water to drink and food to eat— part of a cake of pressed figs and two cakes of raisins. He ate and was revived…”
David let the needy eat at the King’s table (2 Sam 9:6–13) and sought to right food-related wrongs (2 Sam 21:1–6).
Concretely, with your family, focus on some good works to help social categories of where people are excluded. The poor, hungry, the afflicted. If you want some ideas, speak with the Mother of Light center located within our parish boundaries.
Our greatest desire is to see God, that is the cry of human person in the vision of the One who created us out of love. “Whoever sees God has obtained all the goods of which he can conceive,” Saint Gregory of Nyssa says.
Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. “Behold” is meant to get our attention. It’s the future promise that you can taste and rejoice in now.
In conclusion:
Jesus restructured our customary ideas of status, wealth, and material possessions according to God's justice and mercy towards the marginalized, turning our world upside down and our worldview inside out.
"Worldview inside out" means looking at your own perspective and understanding of the world from the inside, focusing on your internal beliefs and you will not experience woe or a curse in how you perceive and interact with the world.
And, BTW, since Jesus lived in the region of Galilee, which is in modern-day Israel; the Galilee area code is 04.
1. Jerome H. Neyrey, 1991 "The Symbolic Universe of Luke-Acts." In The Social World of Luke-Acts. Jerome H. Neyrey, ed., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, pg. Pg. 298: cited in Paul Hertig, The Jubilee Mission of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke: Reversals of Fortunes, Missiology: An International Review, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, April 1998, pg. 174
2. cf. Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media, 2014, 2024), 104–107.?
3. Neyrey, pg. 4
4. Richard Lischer, “The Sermon on the Mount as Radical Pastoral Care,” Interpretation 41/2 (1987): 157-169 cited in Mary Hinkle Shore, Preaching the Beatitudes in the Age of Trump, Journal for Preachers, Lent 2019, Pg. 5-6
5. Richard Lischer, “The Sermon on the Mount as Radical Pastoral Care,” Interpretation 41/2 (1987): 157-169 cited in Mary Hinkle Shore, Preaching the Beatitudes in the Age of Trump, Journalfor Preachers, Lent 2019, Pg. 5-6
