Where is the Mount?

 

This week we get to hear the best of homilies, the best of sermons.  Our Lord speaks to us in the perennial words of the Beatitudes, delivered to us in the Sermon on the Mount.  If we could imagine for a moment being there as Jesus first spoke those words that would be passed on to us in Sacred Scripture.  Picture, if you will, the crowd, of simple down-to-earth people, struggling as shepherds, farmers, fishermen.  There would be hard-working men and women and children, all looking for answers to their own questions.  They were hoping that this teacher would have the answers.  So, they focused on what he was saying.  Every word that came from his mouth were absorbed, for indeed this new way could indeed be the way to their salvation.

Of course, we are not there.  That event happened two thousand years ago in a place far from where most of us find ourselves.  There is one similarity though between that event and the circumstances that we find ourselves today.  And that is that each of us in our own circumstances are just like those who were listening to Jesus at the Mount.  We too find ourselves working hard to make a go of it.  We wonder what will be bring us true happiness.  We need to hear a way that will help us satisfy that nagging that the way of the world is just not right.  We try to satisfy that nagging by absorbing all kinds of content that the world offers, much of it from entertainers and politicians.  We listen to the opinions of others and then agree with those who we think are just like us.  All of that leaves us hungry.  For none of that was ever meant to satisfy, to give us real answers.  The only real truth comes from the one who is The Way, The Truth and The Life. 

And so we who know that fact, that the answers come from the mouth of the Lord, have to be careful not to have his words muddled in the many voices that we hear.  So often the voices and messages we hear come in an appealing package that entertains us and entices us with the world’s offer of an easy life.  The words from the Mount are not about getting an easy life, but rather the offer is for eternal life.

And so we, we who are blessed to know to look for the Mount and to avoid the myriad of other messages, have another responsibility and that is to bring others to the Mount.  Every person is searching for the same answers, for the same truth, but so many think they found the truth aside from the Truth.  So many buy into to the world’s offer of happiness in easy living.  Let us commit to bringing one another to the Mount, to hear the Lord, to come to the Truth.  There really is no other answer.  There really is only one Mount.  Let's get everyone there.

- The Servant