​All Saints & All Souls C (Dan 7:1-3,15-18; Ps 149; Eph 1:11-23; Lk 6:20-31)

The four blessings and the four woes Jesus talks about in today’s gospel lesson are about poverty, hunger, sorrow, and respect. It’s called the four Beatitudes in Luke which is often compared with the eight Beatitudes in Matthew. Using Saint Francis of Assisi’s way of looking at the kingdom of God as the world upside down, it isn’t too hard to make sense of where Jesus comes from with all these four blessings and four woes. If you’re hungry now, you will be filled in the kingdom of God. If you’re full now, you will be hungry in the kingdom of God. If you’re well respected now, you will be ashamed in the kingdom of God. 

This explains why Jesus told the disciples to love their enemies. The world teaches us to hate them and retaliate against them because they have done something wrong to us. But Jesus teaches us to bless them and pray for them. The world teaches if someone strikes you on the cheek, we sue him. But Jesus teaches us to offer the other cheek. What about those who steal from us? The world tells us to punish them. But Jesus tells us to give everyone who begs from us. He finishes his teaching with the golden rule: Do to others as you would have them do to you. Everything here and now is flipped upside down in the kingdom of God. 

While this is the logic of the kingdom of God, knowing and understanding it doesn’t necessarily make us live according to that logic. Having knowledge of how to cook doesn’t mean I actually know how to do it and want to do it. Jesus is able to say with conviction and certainty that those who are hungry now will be filled in the kingdom of God because he not only knows the divine logic but also embodies it within himself. He means what he says. He becomes what he says. He is the Word of God. Jesus was poor and hungry. He wept and was hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed. The crucifixion was the very proof of his life of the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes in both Luke and Matthew represent Jesus’s very own life here on earth. 

A saint in our Christian tradition is the person who at least tries to live this life of the Beatitudes. As we celebrate both the feast of All Saints and the feast of All Souls, we remember all the saints who we don’t personally know but are famous as well as the local saints with whom we have personal relationships. One truth about them is that they were not perfect. Saint Paul was easily irritable. When he was annoyed by people who were following him, he asked God to make them blind. What about Saint Peter who is known for his hot temper? We are not so interested in imitating those very human traits. We remember them for two main reasons. One is to remind ourselves of the love of God which goes beyond life and death and unites us with the dead in Jesus Christ. The other is to follow all the saints’ footsteps which is always to imitate Jesus of Nazareth. In Christ, we are united with all the saints. To Christ, we run with them. With Christ, all the saints and we are determined to live the life of the Beatitudes. 

So what enables us to not only get the logic of the kingdom of God but also live it out? How do we willingly become poor, hungry, sorrowful, and hated by the world? And do we really want this life of the Beatitudes? No. Not without the Holy Spirit. We can dare to love our enemies, turn the other cheek, and live this life of the Beatitudes only when the Holy Spirit empowers us and fills our hearts, when the Holy Spirit completely fills our hearts and transforms the way we look at ourselves, others, and the world. Only then we can repeat the Beatitudes with conviction and certainty. The more the Holy Spirit fills us, the more we’re aware and attentive to the Holy Spirit alive in ourselves. The more we are shaped by the Holy Spirit in us, the less we are attached to our ego and the world and the poorer our ego becomes. 

The first beatitude seems to be the key to the rest of the beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” This is the belief that whatever the world provides can never satisfy the ones who are filled with the Holy Spirit. Everything in this world changes whereas the Holy Spirit remains the same, beyond the beginning and the end of all. This poverty that the Holy Spirit awakens us with is spiritual non-attachment to the ego and the world. Because nothing in the world can be satisfying, the ego feels deficit yet the self is filled with the Holy Spirit and is always content. This is why Saint Paul hears the voice of God, “My grace is sufficient for you.” 

With this dissatisfaction that the ego experiences and the Spirit places in the heart of a saint, with this spiritual non-attachment to the ego and the world, she is always hungry for justice. She’s satisfied and fulfilled only with the Holy Spirit who dwells in her. She weeps for those who suffer. She places herself in solidarity with those who speak, live, and fight for the forgotten, the oppressed, the poor, the sick, and the undocumented. She can dare to love her enemies because nothing evil can ever hurt or ruin her life. Her ego might sense all the hurts that her enemies have done, yet her true self that is filled with the Holy Spirit is always calm, open, embracing, forgiving, graceful and content. God is her refuge. She refuses to remain in the place of pain and bitterness. Instead, the Holy Spirit in her sets her free from that bondage of hurt and resentment and transforms her heart as well as her enemies in the name of love and justice. This is not just the way of a saint but essentially the way of the cross. Thus, Jesus prays on the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

Again, as we celebrate our communion with all saints and all souls, with their perpetual prayer for us the church, with the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and sustaining our lives, we are cultivating the life of the Beatitudes in this life that God has given us. It might still look like an impossible task. It is unrealizable only if you look at your ego that does whatever it desires and never seems to care so much about God’s will. But Saint Paul reminds us of our baptism in our second lesson, “You are marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.” With the Holy Spirit who never ceases to be in our lives, we can be saints for the sake of this world. May the Holy Spirit awaken us, enlighten us, transform us to live the life of Jesus, our incarnate Beatitudes in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 
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