Fr Matthew Reese
“Woe to you, when all men speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.”
—Luke 6: 26
Dear friends in Christ,
Today’s lesson from the Gospel according to Luke (6:12-26) is the lesser-known telling of the Beatitudes.
The text with which we are all most familiar comes instead from Matthew 5:3–10. Matthew’s version, from the Sermon on the Mount, is the basis for the countless musical settings of the passage (Arvo Pärt’s being one of my favorites). It is also notable for its theological breadth, perhaps even its sense of remove.
In Matthew, Jesus says “blessed are the…”
In Luke, Jesus says, “blessed are you…”
Matthew’s text also has the somewhat opaque phrase “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” as opposed to Luke’s much more direct “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Full stop.
Luke’s retelling, from the Sermon on the Plain, is not just a positive articulation of blessedness and Christian hope. Rather it expresses, quite stridently, that there is a mirror image of beatitude: woe.
Luke’s four beatitudes (as opposed to Matthew’s nine), read:
“Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of man!”
And they have their mirrors in woe:
“But woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you that are full now, for you shall hunger. Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you, when all men speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.”
It’s clear why Matthew’s version is the crowd favorite… much easier for us to imagine we’re destined for beatitude than to realize we might be the rich, the well-fed, the good-humored, and the well-thought-of who “have received our consolation.”
The Gospel convicts us sometimes. And that is surely the point.
But I’d like to end with the last woe: “Woe to you, when all men speak well of you.”
This is less obvious than material comfort and self-satisfaction. To me, it seems that one reading is this: speaking God’s truth will, inevitably, make us enemies from time to time. But refusing to speak out for that divine justice has a much greater price.
The Gospel convicts us sometimes. And that is surely the point.
Yours in Christ,
—Fr Matthew
