Fr Marco Lazzaron
e hear a bitter truth in the today’s first reading: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man”. It is meant to say that those who rely excessively on people, in one way or another, sooner or later, even to a slight extent, will be disappointed. Men are never compatible with our expectations. With this, the prophet is not casting anathemas on friendship and family bonds, which must indeed be cultivated and promoted by every means, but he wants to underline that man is never as reliable as the Lord. Jeremiah says that trusting in the Lord is like a tree planted along waterways, that is, it is always maintained and supported.
Only God will be the only one to satisfy us and that only Jesus (God made man) will be faithful to us, having experienced every area of humanity, including the betrayals and abuses. Precisely this experience of a humble and submissive man among men leads him to use frankness and transparency towards us, as can be seen from the speech that Luke places on a plain, unlike Matthew who places it at the top of a mountain. These are the so-called “Beatitudes”. Each of them includes the promise of an objective that is achieved not without struggles or worries. But, God who is the only one we can trust, will not fail to support those who are poor, meek, persecuted, and oppressed. In every situation, those who entrust themselves to the Lord will be “blessed” by God, who overturns the conditions of the human system to reward those who are faithful to him.
Whoever lives the will of the Lord in each of these perspectives is “blessed” right from the beginning, that is, happy, and even if he will not be spared submission, suffering, and oppression by others, he is destined to win and achieve the definitive prize. The “poor” is not necessarily the destitute or the miserable; poor is the one who does not trust in his own material security, who distances himself from luxury and vices, who recognizes God as the supporter of all prosperity and well-being and who is inclined to share what he possesses with those who find themselves in poverty and abandonment. In this situation, he will have to suffer the worldly adversities of a counter-current mentality; he will find himself fighting against the system that exalts gain and possession. But, in the very exercise of his virtues, he will find the joy of carrying out the will of God and he will not be lacking in divine graces.
Unlike Matthew, Luke reports some “antitheses” to the aforementioned “Beatitudes”, characterized by the “woe”, which does not express a vengeful purpose on the part of God, but the very condition in which man will be condemned to find himself when he rejects the spirit of the Beatitudes. He who loves to be rich will be the victim of his own greed. He will be the victim of his own false pride and his deliberate anti-evangelical choice.