A Syllabus for Heaven

I am happy to be here celebrating Mass with you today, and it feels great to be back at a university parish. There was a time in my life several years ago when I was basically always on a college campus: I was pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas parish at the U of A in Fayetteville, and during those four years, I was taking graduate classes during the summers at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. I remember those years with a lot of fondness, and so I feel at home in coming back today to a university parish.

The second semester is now well underway, and if memory serves, it’s around this point in the calendar when the newness of the schedule is wearing off, the excitement about particular classes is staring to fade, and reality is beginning to sink in about the work that lies ahead. It is also around this time that professors, perhaps after hearing students gripe something unexpected on the first quiz or test, utter that famous phrase: “Well… did you look at the syllabus?”

Ah, yes, the syllabus – that document that professors make a big deal about, but which often goes overlooked by students. Who has time to read those things anyway? But it is true that they contain a lot of important information: what the course will teach, what the professor expects of the students, and especially what will be covered on the final exam.

In our Gospel today, we hear Matthew’s account of the Beatitudes. Ah, yes – the Beatitudes, those pithy sayings of Jesus that every Christian knows by heart but which often go overlooked in practice. Who has time to understand what they really mean anyway? And yet, they are important, or else Jesus would not have begun his Sermon on the Mount with them. They are so important that I think we might say they are something like the syllabus of Christian life. The Beatitudes tell us what this course of following Jesus will teach us, what he as our Teacher expects of us his disciples (the word means “students”), and most importantly, what he will judge us on at the close of our lives.

Let’s take each of those three things in turn. First, the Beatitudes show us what we will learn by following Jesus. To be a disciple of the Lord means to allow ourselves to be taught. And not just taught new information, as if knowing things were all it takes to be a Christian, but instead a whole new way of being. The tired, old ways of the world, in which we grasp and claw to claim whatever we can for ourselves, in competition with everyone else and even with God for what we think we are owed, in order to try to create just a bit of peace or security before our short lives are over – that approach no longer serves. Instead, we are taught to hope for something greater: a share in the kingdom of heaven – and by the gift of grace, we are made able to share in it even now, albeit in a limited way. The Beatitudes remind us that there is a reality beyond the here and now, but that we can begin to live for it right here and now.

Sermon on the Mount (1437) by Fra Angelico

They also tell us what Jesus expects of us. If we are going to live for the higher reality of the kingdom to come, then we need to see ourselves as fundamentally oriented toward something different than what the world offers. That’s why to be a Christian means to be a countersign to the world, and even to how our fallen natures sometimes incline us to be. So that we are not confused about exactly how, the Beatitudes spell it out for us: to seek to be poor, rather than rich; to be meek, instead of proud; to be merciful, not grudging or vengeful; to be clean of heart, unpolluted with the corruption of worldly passions; to pursue peace, in place of what divides. And doing all of this, we will encounter resistance, even persecution and slander. The Beatitudes tell us as much. But rather than be sorrowful or lose hope when such things happen, Jesus tells us to rejoice, in spite of our sufferings, *because* of our sufferings, for they are signs that we are on the right path in following him.

Finally, the Beatitudes describe the coming reality of the kingdom of God. And so, it is fair to say, I think, that we have in them a little preview – call it a study guide – of what Jesus will look at when we stand before him at the close of our lives. In the personal judgment that happens at our deaths, and again at the final judgment at the end of all things, we believe that the Lord will evaluate our lives and see whether we have truly learned what he taught us and whether we have put it, by his grace, into practice. For any student, the thought of any final exam probably brings at least a little trepidation, but for the Christian disciple, this is a good thing because it means we can remember to attend to what we need to do now in order to reach the kingdom to come. The Beatitudes in this way make for a great examination of conscience, one to continuously come back to, and one to pray with, so that we may ask Jesus the Good Teacher to instruct us anew.

Friends, I hope this coming semester and all the semesters you have here on campus are good ones. Remember that the Lord calls us to follow him in university life as much as anywhere else. In the ups and downs of our Christian discipleship, let it not be said that we don’t know what the Lord wants from us. Just as students have a syllabus, so too we have the Beatitudes: to guide us, to give us hope when we are discouraged, to challenge us when we become too comfortable, to pray with and ponder now so that we will be ready for that final evaluation when we meet the Lord face to face.

May the graces of this Eucharist help us live out the Beatitudes here and now, and by them be ready for the kingdom to come.