Blessed are you who are poor, hungry, weeping and being mistreated NOW…rejoice and be glad for the kingdom of God is yours. At the inauguration of his public ministry, Jesus made it clear that he was following in the footsteps of the great prophets of old (cf. Luke 4:16ff). Just like them, God had sent him to be a proclaimer of the Good News. However, he also made it clear that he was not merely another prophet in the manner of the Old Testament prophets: he was their fulfillment. His ministry was going to be the fulfillment of the hopes and expectations of the Old Testament prophecies. As God-incarnate, Jesus was going to make tangible in his life and ministry the Good News of the Lord’s involvement in the lives of his people. In him, the Lord was going to personally be present to God’s people. In the Gospel according to Luke, the poor, the downtrodden, the oppressed and afflicted, the forgotten and the neglected, more than any other segment of the society, is presented as beneficiaries of the Lord’s visitation. This group becomes a premier beneficiary of Jesus’ proclamation of the Good News, not only because they are close to the Lord’s heart (cf. Matthew 25:1ff), but also due to their disposition to receive the Good News. The Beatitudes, which is the content for today’s Gospel Reading, makes this very clear. The Beatitudes is an important discourse by Jesus that confirmed him as a great teacher. Coming at a relatively early stage in the course of Jesus’ ministry, the Beatitudes allowed Jesus to present to the people what the Good News of the kingdom constituted. The Beatitudes is constituted of words of comfort, consolation and encouragement. The majority of the people who gathered to listen to Jesus were hungry for such words and were longing to hear them. Although these words of of the Beatitudes come to us today as having been spoken by Jesus on a particular day to a particular group of people, they are very much relevant to us who listen to them today because they are words that describe the ministry of Jesus in its entirety. The Beatitudes is a summary of what Jesus did from the day he inaugurated his ministry to the day he ascended back to the Father. The Beatitudes condenses into one paragraph the entire corpus of the Good News of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Following his baptism and a period of preparation in the desert where he was tempted by Satan, Jesus embarked upon his public ministry on an urgent tone. In the Gospel of Luke, his first action after outlining his mission (cf. Luke 4:16-21) was to cure a demoniac (cf. Luke 4:31-37), an act that left the onlookers speechless. They had never seen anything like it! The onlookers were astonished to see someone who actually cared for the marginalized members of the society. The healing of the demoniac was followed by a series of cures and healings, events that served to endear Jesus more to the masses. However, not everybody was in awe of the doings of Jesus. The religious authorities in particular were rattled by Jesus’ modus operandi. They did not approve of Jesus’ penchant to heal on the Sabbath and in places of worship. They were also against his utterances or statements which they considered blasphemous, statements which Jesus made even as he performed the healings (such as “your sins are forgiven”). They wanted him to desist from what he was doing. However, Jesus didn’t pay attention to them. Instead, he focused all his energies on his ministry. He became amazed at the hard-heartedness of the religious authorities who had neglected their responsibility of being shepherds to the people. He was surprised at their lack of compassion that played out in their disregard for the welfare of the most vulnerable members of the society. This must have been the scenario that played out in front of Jesus as he descended the mountain of prayer with the newly-chosen twelve helpers. As Jesus looked at the crowd, he was met with their most basic need: someone to speak for them in order to address their plight. In his own words, the people were like sheep without a shepherd (cf. Mark 6:34). In addition to wearing the appearance of a lost and dejected lot, they were hungry, they were poor, they were weeping, and they were bruised from the constant harassment to which they were subjected at the hands of their religious leaders. Jesus saw in their eyes the need to be accepted and to belong. Jesus addressed them. He gave them words of comfort and consolation. He encouraged them and told them that contrary to what they might have been told, they were blessed. They were indeed blessed because him for whom they were looking was already in their midst. They were blessed because it was for them that God had assumed human nature. They were blessed because It is for them that Jesus had ushered the kingdom. They were blessed because they were going to be fed, sheltered, comforted, and healed. They were blessed because they were already members of the kingdom.