This morning’s Gospel reading is Luke 6:17, 20–26:

 Jesus came down with the Twelve and stood on a stretch of level ground with a great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon. 

And raising his eyes toward his disciples he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.”

 Where do we put our hope? In whom -- or what -- do we trust?

In some ways, I felt yesterday as though I had already written part of today's reflection. The Free Press featured an essay at The Free Press on Friday about the damage and deception created by the hook-up culture from Louise Perry, author of the book A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century. Perry and publisher Bari Weiss also published a podcast interview discussing the topic, focusing in large part on the social and political questions this raises. 

But to their credit, Perry and Weiss get closer to the heart of the issue, which is a spiritual sickness that politics and culture can’t entirely address. At one point in the podcast, Perry argues that the Christian framework of family life and inherent dignity offered a far more liberating experience for women, despite her own professed atheism.  She assert that Christian sexual and family mores — last broadly applied in the 1950s — are the principles to which modern society should return.

I wrote a response to the argument that largely agreed with Perry (and Weiss, at least as how I interpreted her part of the conversation.) Normally I would have left it there, and I usually don’t discuss current events as part of our Sunday reflections, but I read today’s passages immediately after writing yesterday’s analysis. And they speak directly to the spiritual decay that led Perry to comment at one point that we have regressed to paganism, and are suffering the consequences of it. 

At least in the confines of the essay and podcsast, Perry and Weiss mainly focus on the deleterious effects of commodifying sex and human beings down to their component value as pleasure centers. These are not new issues; in fact, they are as old as humanity and just as corrosive as ever. It comes from a fundamental refusal to grasp our true identity as children of God, and especially our refusal to see others as His children, and our bodies and His creation in general as part of the Father’s provision for our happiness rather than mechanisms for disordered impulses. 

The prophet Jeremiah speaks directly to this point in our first reading. The “weeping prophet” tries to warn the Judeans that their decision to forsake the Lord and to instead rely on the flesh to satisfy their worldly appetites are leading to their destruction. The tone is opposite that of the Beatitudes in our Gospel reading, emphasis mine:

 Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a barren bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season, but stands in a lava waste, a salt and empty earth. 

Jesus reverses the structure of this in Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount, but with the same message. He urges his followers and the crowd to rely on the Lord and follow His Word for true happiness, in eternity, rather than obsess with the material pleasures and privileges of a fallen world. In every exhortation, Jesus promises that putting these obsessions with the flesh aside will open the door to a much more profound happiness in His service, before getting to the “woes” that parallel Jeremiah’s prophecy. 

Paganism argues the opposite, at least as practiced at that time and in ours. It rejects the lordship of God and argues that pleasure and material wealth and privilege are all that matters. It is a repeat of the Golden Calf in Exodus; we worship what we have through the Creator as if it belonged and originated with us rather than the Lord. Not only is that a usurpation of His authority, but it makes every object a commodity reduced to its utilitarian value — including ourselves and our brothers and sisters in His creation.

Sexual sin is hardly the only category to which Jesus’ sermon and Jeremiah’s prophecy apply, of course. However, sexual sin is the most reductive of all, because it orients our identity furthest from its truth as beloved children of God made in His image. It reduces us to objects and makes us obsess with our material natures as if we are merely animals rather than people with innate dignity. Only when we lose that sense of ourselves can we embrace the casual cruelty of “hook-up culture,” treating His sons and daughters as if they are barely animate receptacles for our sexual impulses. 

And only then can we treat the products of those actions as though they were merely “clumps of cells” suitable for disposal, too. Didn’t we also treat the partner of that creation as though they were nothing more than a clump of cells, with no value after a spasm or two of pleasure? 

Today’s responsorial psalm reminds us that “blessed are those who hope in the Lord.” When we hope and trust in the Lord, even as imperfectly as we may -- and I myself am far from perfect in this -- we at least orient ourselves to see Him in those around us. That is the answer to a culture of paganized death that has embraced the Golden Calf all over again, as it poses it as liberation and sophistication rather than the slavery of the flesh and the domination of the weak by the strong. Only when we wake up from the slavery of our own predilections and rebellions can we hope to heal, and to grasp the wisdom and love within the Beatitudes.  

And for those of us struggling to awaken from the moral coma of our current culture fully, we must also work and pray to help our brothers and sisters escape from its bondage. Put your trust and hope in the Lord that we can all come home to Him. 

Previous reflections on these readings:

• Blessings, woes, and the Super Bowl: Sunday reflection (2022)
• From here to eternity: Sunday reflection (2019)

The front-page image is "Sermon on the Mount" by Cosimo Rosselli, c. 1481-2. On display in the Sistine Chapel. Via Wikimedia Commons. 

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature that looks at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.