by James Martin
THIS DOES NOT MEAN that Jesus was making a blanket statement about the inherent goodness of poverty or mourning per se. We must, for example, distinguish between the voluntary poverty of the disciple and the involuntary poverty of the person struggling to make ends meet. Having worked with the poor in both the inner cities of America and the slums of Africa, I know that poverty in and of itself is not “blessed.” Likewise, Jesus is not saying that mourning day and night for the rest of your life is desirable. What he’s saying is more subtle.
Consider his words “Blessed are the poor.” Besides reminding us that the poor are blessed by a God who promises justice for the oppressed, Jesus is also turning our attention to the way the poor live in relationship with God.
While one cannot overgeneralize about those who are poor, I can say this, based on my experience over the last twenty-five years: many people who live in poverty are more conscious of their reliance on God than are their wealthier counterparts. During my two years in Kenya, I noticed this many times. There the refugees with whom I worked taught me a great deal about God. Without wealth, status, or power, their natural dependence on God was ever before them. And the refugees would regularly express thanks to God for small blessings—a found coin, getting over a cold, a conductor forgetting to ask them for their bus fare. “God is good!” one Rwandese refugee would say whenever life went her way. Their almost constant, and constantly voiced, gratitude was a blessing for me—and a spiritual lesson.
So was their generosity. Almost to a person, the refugees were unbelievably generous with what little they had. Once I was invited to a Ugandan refugee’s small shack in the slums of Nairobi for an afternoon visit. Loyce had been given a small grant from the Jesuit Refugee Service to purchase a sewing machine, so that she could work as a seamstress from her home. Upon my arrival, I discovered that Loyce had cooked a full meal with beef, peanuts, and rice, which must have cost her a week’s earnings. When I protested, Loyce said that this was simple hospitality.
The next year, after returning to the States, I was invited to give a talk to a small group of wealthy people in a tony apartment in Manhattan around dinnertime. After speaking for an hour, I was offered a glass of water and a few crackers. Then the group—I’m not making this up—went out for dinner without inviting me along. “Good night, Father!”
I remembered my meal in the slums with Loyce. Ironically, the topic of my talk that night was life in East Africa.
We cannot lump together all the poor (or all the rich). Even categories like “the poor” and “the rich” are misleading. Not every poor person is grateful or generous. And grinding poverty is an evil. But Jesus of Nazareth, who had grown up in a poor village, knew that we can often learn much from the poor. Jesus’s comments about poverty are frequent in the Gospels: over and over he asks us to care for the poor—it is a litmus test for admission into heaven—so it is always surprising to me when Christians set aside this teaching.17 But Jesus is saying that more than helping the poor and more than working to combat the systems that keep them poor, we must become like them—in their simplicity, generosity, and dependence on God.
So we are not only to care for them, we are to become poor ourselves, to strip ourselves of all that keeps us from God. In this reliance on God, the poor are our models. And so blessed are they.
The Beatitudes are not just a promise of reward for those who suffer unjustly and a prediction of the turnabout of the status quo. They also paint a portrait of the person Jesus wants us to be.18 Several of Jesus’s themes in the Beatitudes are repeated elsewhere in the Gospels. “Blessed are the poor” means not simply that the indigent will be rewarded, but that simplicity of life is important. (“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”19) “Blessed are the poor in spirit” means not simply that they will be rewarded, but that humility is important. (“The greatest among you will be your servant.”20)
Jesus was inviting the multitudes, and us, not only to hear a promise of future reward to those who suffer, but to embody certain virtues now. In doing so we become the people he intends us to be, participate in his reign, and become his disciples. And so we are blessed.
AS I SAT IN the garden on the Mount of Beatitudes, I wondered, What would it mean to live the Beatitudes? A phrase that I once heard on a retreat came to mind: A Person of the Beatitudes. Since I first heard that expression, I’ve tried to become that person—humble, merciful, gentle, peacemaking, seeking justice for others—and have tried to move closer to the vision of personhood Jesus was describing. But I still have far to go.
It’s obvious when you meet a Person of the Beatitudes. The most recent example is someone I met a few years ago, a young Jesuit who is, funny enough, named Luke, who worked with me at America magazine. Luke lives simply and tries to be poor. All Jesuits take vows of poverty, but Luke lives more simply than most, with very few possessions; and when I met him he had just completed a stint working with the poor on a Native American reservation in South Dakota. Luke was also meek (he never shouted or bullied people); poor in spirit (when I once suggested some major changes to an article he was writing, he accepted them willingly, eagerly, even cheerfully); and merciful (he thought nothing of spending his Christmas Eve driving an elderly Jesuit many miles to spend time with his family). Most of all, he hungered and thirsted for righteousness (Luke was an active member of the Catholic Worker movement).
One day Luke told me that he was fasting for a week. That weekend he was planning to attend a protest march for peace and had committed himself to eating no solids, only drinking juice, as a spiritual preparation. Beatitude-wise, that meant he was hungry too. I mentioned this to the person with whom he shared an office, who professed surprise. His office mate had no idea Luke was fasting. Had that been me, I would have probably found some way to make sure everyone knew! But a Person of the Beatitudes—poor, poor in spirit, meek, hungering for justice, peacemaking—doesn’t need to do that.
The Beatitudes are a vision not only for the end times, or for society, but for us. We become who Jesus hopes us to be, as a people and as individuals. So we are blessed.
MAYBE MORE THAN BLESSED. During my time in East Africa, I once attended a weekend retreat that took as its theme the Beatitudes. Held in a small parish center near Mt. Kenya, the retreat was led by Anthony Bellagamba, IMC, an Italian priest who had spent many years in Africa.
One day, as black-and-white colobus monkeys skittered across the roof, Father Bellagamba invited us to think about how the Beatitudes influenced our work with the poor. In my retreat notes I wrote down the questions that made a special impression on me: “Do you show superiority when dealing with them? Do you affirm them? Do you help them obtain their identity?” The Beatitudes, he said, can also relate to the way we look at ourselves: “Do you show mercy to yourself by being patient with yourself?”
At one point he explained that the word “beatitude” comes from the Latin beatus, meaning “blessed.”
“No kidding,” I said cynically to the Jesuit sitting beside me.
“But do you know what else it can mean?” asked Father Bellagamba.
“Happy!” he said with a big smile.
When we translate the original Greek, Father Bellagamba said, we can use either “blessed” or “happy.” The Greek makarioi carries both meanings, while the English “blessed” conveys only a sense of being approved by God—fortunate, welcomed, holy.21 But Jesus offers something else to the downtrodden, oppressed, and forgotten. He promises them, and all who follow him, happiness. Incidentally, my friend Luke is a pretty happy guy.
Imagine how different Christian spirituality would be if the Beatitudes were translated with the word “happy.” Imagine that when we heard those readings we heard a long list of happiness. “Happy are the merciful.” “Happy are the pure in heart.” “Happy are the peacemakers.” But that’s what Jesus was saying that day in Galilee, and to us today.
Does that
sound odd? Remember that Jesus promises that those who mourn will laugh. And remember what, at the end of both versions of the Beatitudes, Jesus says to those who are persecuted. According to Matthew, “Rejoice and be glad.” Luke is even zestier: “Rejoice on that day and leap for joy.” Another translation is “Rejoice on that day and dance!” Jesus ushers us into a space of happiness, now.
So it’s conceivable that the main reaction of the original hearers of the Sermon on the Mount is something we tend to overlook in the Christian life: happiness. On that day, wherever the mountain was, I’ll bet that the poor were delighted to hear themselves included in Jesus’s vision. I’ll bet that the forgotten were happy that Jesus was promising them a place at the table. I’ll bet that the oppressed were joyful to be elevated, finally.
And I’ll bet Jesus was smiling when he said it. For happy was he.
* * *
THE BEATITUDES
Matthew 5:1–12
(See also Luke 6:20–23)
* * *
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
* * *
CHAPTER 11
Capernaum
“They removed the roof above him.”
DID JESUS HAVE A house? That’s something I wondered about during our stay in Galilee. With so many stories about Jesus walking from town to town and his comment that the “Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” until recently I imagined that the itinerant carpenter either slept by the side of the road with his disciples or simply bunked at the houses of friends—like with Martha and Mary in Bethany or with Peter by the Sea of Galilee.1 But one passage about Jesus’s time in Capernaum, his base for ministry, includes a tantalizing phrase.
Mark paints the early days of Jesus’s ministry as a flurry of activity in Capernaum and the surrounding towns. And prominent in Mark’s second chapter is the dramatic story of the healing of a paralyzed man. When recounting that same story, the Gospel of Matthew notes that it takes place in “his own town.” Luke, on the other hand, leaves the location vague; he places Jesus simply in Galilee. But Mark says that people had heard that Jesus was en oikō, in the house or in a house. But some translations use “at home.”2 People had heard that he was at home. Did this mean Jesus owned a home?
Some scholars say that this Greek phrase could refer to the house of Peter and his brother Andrew, the ruins of which you can see in present-day Capernaum.3 About this first-century structure Jerome Murphy-O’Connor notes: “[T]he hint that the room was put to some type of public use is confirmed by the great number of graffiti scratched in the plaster walls. Some of them mention Jesus as Lord and Christ.”4 Crossan and Reed note that the graffiti in this simple first-century “courtyard” house was scrawled in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Syriac. “The very fact that the room was plastered and graffitied,” they write, “makes it totally unlike any other in Capernaum, or elsewhere in Galilee, and demonstrates that this one-time room in a private residence was held in special regard by many people only a century after Jesus’s activities in Galilee.”5
The site was venerated by early Christians, who built a small church there, a structure mentioned by at least one fourth-century pilgrim. Today, over the ruins of the modest, octagonal, basalt-stone church, roughly fifteen feet in diameter and standing some three feet high, hovers an enormous modernist church perched on metal pylons: the Church of St. Peter’s House. It looks like a gray spaceship has landed atop the original structure. On the floor of the steel-and-glass church is a window through which pilgrims peer directly into the ruins of the much older church and the original dwelling below.
Is this the site of Peter’s house? Murphy-O’Connor concludes that, although it is impossible to know for certain, evidence of veneration from before the time of Constantine argues for its authenticity: “The most reasonable assumption is the one attested by the Byzantine pilgrims: namely, that it was the house of Peter in which Jesus lodged (Mt 8:14).”6
In that case, was Jesus’s house a few feet away from Peter’s in Capernaum? It would have made sense for Jesus to have a permanent dwelling. Then again, perhaps it makes more sense for the man who asked his followers to give up all they had to own nothing of his own.7 Either way, Jesus made his “home” among the houses of Capernaum. And by tradition the door was open to all guests.
Capernaum is described at various times in the Gospels as a polis (“city”), though archaeologist Jonathan Reed points out that this may be simply a loose term for any town or village. Mark notes that Capernaum had a toll house, and other evangelists suggest the presence of a small garrison under the command of Herod Antipas, which argues for a town of some importance.8 But archaeological finds indicate that the town, which probably held around a thousand people, was a “simple peasant and fisherman’s village.”9 Unlike wealthier towns in Herod’s territories, Capernaum did not have an outdoor market, or agora. Nor were any of its streets paved. Indeed, no wider than six to ten feet, the crooked and disorganized passageways were more like alleys than streets.
In Excavating Jesus, Crossan and Reed invite us to imagine walking around Jesus’s home base in Galilee: “You could easily manage your way around Capernaum by keeping to the spacious shoreline, or you could cut through the village in spaces left between clusters of courtyard houses. Passageways and streets ran in slightly crooked and curved lines with wider spots used to work on a boat, hang and mend fishing nets, or set up goat and sheep pens.”10 Overall, they describe the village as “a step up from Nazareth, but many, many steps down from Sepphoris or Tiberias.”11
What did homes in Capernaum look like in Jesus’s time? Akin to those in Nazareth, they were small, usually one or two rooms, built with the rough, dark, local basalt stone—still evident in the ruins today—and held together with mud or dung. Few of the houses had more than one story, and if they did, the poor construction techniques made the walls susceptible to collapse.
From the total lack of any remains of stone arches, vaults, or rafters and an absence of roof tiles in the excavations, archaeologists have concluded that the houses were topped off with a flat, thatched roof, made from sturdy wooden crossbeams, filled with brushwood, and packed together with clay. Grass often grew atop the roof.12
That roof plays an important part in the marvelous story of the paralyzed man, told in all three of the Synoptic Gospels.
IN MARK’S TELLING, JESUS has returned to Capernaum and is either “in the house” or “at home,” where he is swamped with visitors, the crowd spilling into the courtyard. As I’ve mentioned, the places where Jesus did his miracles around the Sea of Galilee were very near one another. So reports that many in the area had heard of him are easy to understand.
Thus, as the Gospel of Mark tells us, in the house there was no room for the crowd, “not even in front of the door.” It’s easy to imagine the crush of people straining to see and hear and even touch the wonder-worker. After all, in Mark’s account Jesus has just healed a man with leprosy. Then and now, people are desperate for not only a physical heal
ing but someone who preaches with authenticity. Word would have spread like wildfire within the confines of the small towns clustered along the shoreline.
In the midst of Jesus’s preaching, four men arrive carrying a paralyzed man on a krabattos, a mat or pallet. A krabattos was used by the poor as a bed, but also could have been used by the paralyzed man for begging. (During my time in Nairobi, some of the refugees wove such straw mats and indeed some of these mats were used, as in Jesus’s time, by beggars.13) The man’s desperate condition is made clear by Mark, and he would have been doubly desperate: not only could he not walk (or conceivably even move), but his lameness might have been considered by some to be the result of sin.
The four men have a problem. They are unable to get near Jesus because of the crowd. This may simply reflect the crush of people. But, as we will see later with the story of Zacchaeus, a short man who must climb a tree to see Jesus “because of the crowd,” the phrase may serve to remind us that the “crowd” can prevent us from getting close to God in a variety of ways.
Not able to reach Jesus because of the crowd, the man’s friends do something daring—and desperate. Clambering onto the roof, they hoist up their friend and begin tearing apart the roof. (The roof was a place to rest and relax, so there was usually a stairway leading up to it.) The Greek says, marvelously, that the four “unroofed the roof” (apestegasan tēn stegēn), ripping off the mud and thatch. In Luke’s later version of the story he alters the wording for his readership. In his account the men remove “tiles,” which would have been more familiar to his cosmopolitan audience. But Mark’s description is more accurate.14
