6th Sunday of Ordinary Time (C): February 13, World Marriage Day
“The Beatitudes—The GPS to Joy”
Msgr. Thomas Gervasio
“And so, they lived happily ever after.” A familiar phrase? Most of us know it to be the end of most fairy tales. It is our hope that every married couple live happily ever after. I mention this since we are celebrating “National Marriage Week” a time to honor this vocation and those who live it day in and day out.
In preparing a couple for marriage, I often ask this basic question: “Why do you want to marry?” The responses certainly vary from the simple to the elaborate. Years ago, a very young man struggled to respond. His fiancé elbowed him and said sternly, “Go on, tell Father that you love me!” The responses have been many, but I’ve never heard this simple one: “I want to marry to be happy.”
St. John Paul II said, “People are made for happiness. God created man and woman in paradise because he wanted them to be happy.” It is God’s desire for every person and especially those who enter the covenant of marriage. And yet, we know that marital bliss and happiness in general doesn’t just happen. It is the result of the choices we make. Fr. Nouwen says, “We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. This is not always easy since married life is not devoid of stress and struggle. Most of the time we have no control over the circumstances that daily life presents, but we do have a choice in regard to the way we respond to those circumstances. It is a difficult choice because by nature we are weak, imperfect beings. It’s been said that “a perfect marriage is just two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other.”
St. John Paul II called the Beatitudes, in today’s Gospel, “the roads signs that show the way to happiness.” They involve making definitive choices. When we first read them, they are rather disconcerting since they run contrary to what the world honors and so we are tempted to view them as mere poetry, but they are “the road map for the Church” and “directions for discipleship.” [Benedict XVI] and indeed for Christian marriage. Let’s consider the choices they present.
The Lord blesses the poor and warns the rich. The Lord never condemns wealth, but a disciple chooses to be “detached” from it, not allowing wealth to be the dominant and controlling force of life, displacing the spiritual. A disciple uses material things as St. Robert Bellarmine advises, “with moderation, sobriety, and temperance.”
The Lord blesses the hungry and warns the satisfied. While the world would have us believe that true happiness is found in the fulfillment of our every desire, a disciple chooses to reject this egocentric mindset. Life is not always and everywhere “about me.” Discipleship has eyes and ears open to the needs of others and where there is a hunger, a strong desire to meet those needs.
The Lord blesses those who weep and warns the gleeful. Every disciple, every married couple realizes that life is not immune from difficult days. The choice is to cling to what provides strength through the storms of life. It is found through the power of daily prayer, the sacraments and the support and encouragement we offer to others.
Finally, the Lord blesses those who are hated, excluded, insulted, and denounced as evil and warns us to be wary when others speak well of us. It is only natural that we should like to be well thought of, to be popular! We tend to measure our self-worth by what others say about us. We measure it from the number of likes and number of friends we have on a Facebook page. Still, Our Lord reminds us that in following him we can expect to be unpopular. We can expect adversity. We can expect to share in the cross. A disciple, a husband and wife are called to choose courage…to ask for the gift of fortitude to renew daily the “yes” made at baptism, the “yes” made on their wedding day.
The Beatitudes are a paradox to be embraced. Let us pray that all of us, especially married couples make them the directions, the “GPS” for discipleship…dare to choose what they propose so we can all “live happily ever after!”
