Blessed are they who love!

Poverty breeds anger and aggression. The desperate people in Haiti could express their anger in many different ways. Watch the change of language! The tone, the choice of words, the modulation and the format! One doesn’t need to go far to get an education in obscenity these days: in grounds, malls, theaters we could hear teenagers using foul language without any logical reasoning. Words that were bad in 60s are now culturally acceptable. Psychologists still argue that if the kids use them in the privacy of their rooms, it is ok! The peer pressure, music and song lyrics, TV shows and movies shock our culture and make us uncultured. More than all these lack of role models in parents and lack of parenting stand top of the list.

Marriage as a sacrament, calls for a deep sense of responsibility. The church always taught us to be ‘doubly careful’ in parenting the teens. Bad models and extremists concepts are copied so powerfully in the young minds and hearts. As a teacher, I have always learnt that the best way to get best results from the students in terms of academics and respect – the violent way. Most of the accomplished teachers at that stage of my life were tough and unsocial. They got their results. I publicly whacked my students for nearly 10 minutes because they did not do their homework. It troubled me so deeply that I vowed never to use force in my teaching career. This was possible only when I reflected upon the exact opposite role models I had as teachers who made me a joyful person.

How strong are you in your vocation as a husband, as a wife? In other words what is your level of patience and understanding! Every one of you married in the Catholic Church, when you filled in your pre-nuptial enquiry form took an oath on God and in front of a priest that you are aware of what you are doing. Our children or grandchildren register the vocabulary of your happiness, sadness, anger and excitement all alike! I personally believe that the failure of the student heavily depends of the failure of the teacher.

These harsh words from Isaiah and the ‘Woes’ in the gospel today are not the result of foul language! They are language of caution and care. If we want to summarize the whole gospel in a single sentence, we could say, ‘Blessed are you who love, for you will continue to experience the Love of God.’ All those ‘Blessed’ words are words of love: If you love, you will be hungry, you will weep, and you will be hated, excluded and insulted. If you are rich on account of someone else, you are filled at the expense of someone else’s food, and you laugh at someone else’s downfall and are looking for cheap praises, we have to be sure that there is no true love there!

Being ‘Blessed’ is the result of a rich experience of living in God’s love for a great period of time. One does not become blessed overnight! Patience is a virtue. It is interesting to note the words of St. Paul. Love is patience. It is different from ‘Patience is a form of love.’ This young man told the master that he is a seeker of truth. The master asked him what he should have first to seek the truth. The student said, ‘an overwhelming passion for it.’ The answer is, said the master, ‘an unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong.’ We are so fast in expressing our love but too slow in expressing that we are wrong. We are so fast in saying, I love you but too slow in saying ‘I am sorry.’

The challenges of patience in real life situations extend our persistence in our faith. When was the last time we prayed for patience! If we prayed for patience, don’t we see the change of our language, the language of our children? Don’t we see more of ‘Blessed’ instead of ‘Woes’? Blessed are you who love!