Are We Blessed Or Are We Cursed?
2022년 2월 13일Are We Blessed Or Are We Cursed?
< Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time >
Koreans have a saying (or they used to!): “아들부자 입니다” meaning someone was rich in sons. You might find it surprising that in parts of Africa, a family with many sons is actually considered poor, but the family with many daughters is rich. They’re not just being nice. The price of a bride (“dowry” in English) is 40 head of cattle. For these people cattle is wealth. For every son you marry off, you must pay the bride’s family 40 cows. Conversely, for every daughter who gets married, you will receive 40 cows. In Jesus’ time, being blessed meant living a long time, having good health and many children, being wealthy, with an honorable job and good reputation. However if you were poor, sick, had no job, no children and died young, or worse, violently, clearly you were cursed by God. Chances are, if we are honest, we probably believe this as well.
But this is not what Jesus teaches in today’s gospel. He turns society’s values upside-down. He not only declares the poor to be blessed, he says the rich are cursed. I will be honest and admit today’s gospel makes me uncomfortable. If it doesn’t make you uncomfortable, you’re either poor yourself or you’re not paying attention. But truth be told, sometime in our lives we will feel either blessed or cursed. Consider the Kennedy family. By all worldly accounts they were blessed. But at the same time, for all their money, fame, and power, they suffered illnesses, accidents, and assassinations. Luke’s gospel is meant to give us hope when our luck runs out, but also to caution us when everything goes right. Our health, our job, our wealth can change over night. Let us therefore not put our hope and trust in our good fortune, nor get discouraged when things get difficult, but rather let us put all our hope and trust in the God whose love for us never changes.