THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT (Matthew 5)

WHY WOULD GOD SINGLE OUT THE POOR FOR SPECIAL ATTENTION OVER ANY OTHER GROUP?

1. The poor know they are in urgent need of redemption.

2. The poor know not only their dependence on God and on powerful people but also their interdependence with one another.

3. The poor rest their security not on things but on people.

4.The poor have no exaggerated sense of their own importance, and no exaggerated need of privacy.

5. The poor expect little from competition and much from cooperation.

6. The poor can distinguish between necessities and luxuries.

7. The poor can wait, because they have acquired a kind of dogged patience born of acknowledged dependence.

8. The fear of the poor are more realistic and less exaggerated, because they already know that one can survive great suffering and want.

9. When the poor have the Gospel preached to them, it sounds like good news and not like a threat or a scolding.

10. The poor can respond to the call of the Gospel with a certain abandonment and uncomplicated totality because they have so little to lose and are ready for anything (Monica Hellwig, writer).

This is why so many saints voluntarily submitted to the discipline of poverty. Dependence, humility, simplicity, cooperation, and a sense of abandon are qualities greatly prized in the spiritual life, but extremely elusive for people who live in comfort. There may be other ways to God but they are hard - as hard as a camel sqeezing through the eye of a needle. In the Great Reversal of God's Kingdom, prosperous saints are very rare.

The poor are no more virtuous than anyone else, but are less likely to pretend to be virtuous!

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