No Matter One’s Present Circumustances, Wisdom, Faith and Hope Demands Walking the Path of Trust in God For Life
Deacon Patrick Constantino | Photos courtesy Patrick Constantino
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to 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.
The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Walking in pain with Jesus brings healing and comfort during this Jubilee 2025 Pilgrims of Hope Year! Our message today: Life & Faith (Ti Biag ken Pammati), God gives us His message in today’s Gospel and readings. As you can imagine, many people seek their clergy when they are wrestling with some sort of mortal issue or difficult decision. The presumption—whether correct or not—is that we are kind of experts in this area. And often when people want to discuss something with me, what they really want is for me to give them some sort of definitive answer; that is, to tell them exactly what they should do, what choice they should make. Instead, they usually get a somewhat disappointing answer from me. And the reason is simple—many, maybe most of these questions do not have a clear-cut answer. In other words, I often cannot say with any sort of confidence what they should do, cannot say one choice is 100% wrong and the other choice is 100% right. Often, I simply help the person look at all the various aspects of their problem with the hope that maybe the scales will get tipped in one way or the other—thereby helping the person have some confidence even if it is just a small amount in one choice over another.
Put another way—people usually come to me wanting black or white answers. Instead, I sometimes must point out the grayness of the situation, the complexities, and that their choice is not as simple as they hoped. Much of the spiritual life and life in general fall into this category. Part of being a person of faith is wrestling with these sorts of things, taking what we believe in faith and trying to shed some light on what a proper course of action might look like. And that can be pretty difficult at times. Truthfully, many moral decisions come down to picking the thing that has a 55% or 60% chance of being what God is asking of us in a given situation. It’s easy to simply pick the thing we want and find a way to be okay with it or convince ourselves it’s also what God wants. And when that happens, we can find ourselves making decision after decision that is just in our own best interest, the decision that always rewards us in some way or demands little from us. Yet, today’s readings suggest that on occasion, things are essentially black or white, are right or wrong, are what God wants or what He does not want, are life-giving or life-draining. These sorts of things are kind of like a coin—just two-sided, a coin landing on heads or tails but never on its edge.
Do we believe these sorts of decisions exist? And do we recognize them when they present themselves? We just heard the Sermon on the Plain. Yes, that is what we commonly call this passage from Luke. The first half is familiar—what we call the Beatitudes, slightly altered wording from what we find in Matthew’s account—the Sermon on the Mount. And while the situations described in these lines can be challenging, the overall effect is positive, uplifting, and encouraging. Blessed are you, blessed are you, blessed are you, blessed are you. That all sounds pretty good to me. But Luke does something Matthew does not do—he includes a series of other statements from Jesus to bring into focus the flipsides to all those statements about being blessed. In other words, Jesus is pointing to them and us. If we accept what He said about blessedness, we must, in a very real sense, accept what the opposite of those statements imply. And He uses that dreaded word “woe” to get his point across. And that does not sound nearly as good to me. I guess there are some black or white things after all. And it makes me start wondering about my own life, my own moral standing—makes me wonder if I am giving myself a pass on some things that should be clear to me, things I should be convinced need to change.
Am I poor—that is, am I unattached to the things I have, or am I rich—clinging to and attempting to get all I can during my time on this earth? Am I hungry—that is, do I leave some of my needs unmet so I can more fully meet the needs of others or am I filled now—that is, do I place my needs and wants before those of others? Am I laughing now—that is, am I detached from the sufferings of others or am I grieving and weeping—that is, am I empathetic to the pain of those around me, compassionate towards people who are suffering? And am I hated—that is, do I courageously stand up for what I believe in a loving way, of course, or does everyone speak well of me—that is, do I basically stand for nothing and simply go around trying to please everyone in every situation? My friends, living a life pleasing to God is not easy. Often, it is pretty difficult to know what to do in a given situation. And all God asks ist hat we wrestle with whatever difficulties we are having in coming to a clear understanding and simply make the best choice we can. But let us not presume we can take that kind of uncertain approach to every choice we have to make. Sometimes, the choice from our faith or conscience is clear.
Sometimes, we do know what God would want from us in a given situation, yet sometimes, we try to talk ourselves into the choice we want. When we hear that voice loud and clear, when right or wrong is in sharp focus, let us be sure to choose right—choose the thing that honestly reflects the God-choice and not the me-choice. Blessedness—a God-centered Life is sure to follow. Jeremiah in our First Reading put it this way, and I am paraphrasing: We can trust in human beings and be cursed or we can trust in God and be blessed. It is sort of black or white, even if it is certainly not easy. So let us do the right thing when it is clear what the right thing is and begin living the life God wants for us and from us—a life of great meaning, joy, and yes, blessedness, through the life and faith that Jesus gives us! Jesus, I trust in You! Amen!
Deacon Patrick Constantino retired from active Ministry on July 1, 2022. He is still a Deacon in good standing with full faculties to perform all sacraments in the Diocesan of Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Constantino has been ordained for thirty-seven years. He is the first Filipino Deacon in the Diocesan of Honolulu. Prior to his ordination, Constantino was in government—first appointed in 1966 as Assistant Sergeant of Arms by the Speaker of the House, Elmer F. Cravalho. When Cravalho became Maui’s first Mayor, Constantino became his Executive Assistant—the first of Filipino ancestry. Later, Constantino became the first County Treasurer of Filipino ancestry and the first County Grants Administrator and Risk Manager of Filipino ancestry. Constantino has been married to his lovely wife Corazon for sixty-four years. They are blessed with four children, eleven grandchildren, and fifteen great-grandchildren.