Happy are the Poor

Reflection on Luck 6:17. 20-26

Before and during the time of Jesus, the popular wisdom in Israel was that wealth, prosperity was a blessing, a clear sign of divine approval. On the contrary, poverty, adversity was a curse, a sign of disfavour in the sight of God. That kind of thinking endured in spite of its being contradicted by the Book of Job in the Old Testament.

When Jesus came along, he stood the received wisdom on its head. He said that the poor were in fact blessed, happy. The reason for that was that the kingdom of God was theirs. The hungry, those who mourned, those who wept, and those who suffered persecution were all equally blessed, happy. By contrast, the rich, those who had their fill, those who were laughing, and those whom the world spoke well about were all in trouble. Jesus said, "Alas!" to them.

There is no particular virtue in being poor, neither is there any inherent evil in being rich. Both the poor and the rich can and do go to heaven, just as both also can and do go to hell. However, age-old experience has taught that people who are poor or deprived often tend to look up to God for their sufficiency. They tend to be deeply religious. By contrast, a lot of people who are rich consider themselves self-sufficient. They believe or they behave as if they had little use for God in their lives. There are several stories in the Gospels that describe the attitude of the self-sufficient rich man. One is the story of the "Rich Young Man" who would not leave everything to follow Jesus, because "he was a man of great wealth" (Mark 10: 17-22). Another is the story of the "Rich Fool" who did not include God in his plans for the future (Luke 12: 16­21). Yet another is the story of the "Rich Man" who went to a place of torment after death because he failed to give a crumb of food to the poor man Lazarus while on earth (Luke 16: 19-31).

If we are poor now, and we work hard to become rich, we do no wrong. If we are rich now, and we work hard to remain so, we do no wrong either. There is just one thing, though: whether we become rich in the future or we are already rich now, must remember to always subordinate our wealth to God. We must never lose sight of the fact that our sufficiency is in him alone, not in any of our possessions, however much they may be. That is something that comes very easier to people who are poor than those who are rich. That is why the poor are “happy”, “blessed”, and it is “alas” to the rich!