II
To help express what I think Jesus is getting at, I want to sit with the word at the beginning of the Psalm for a bit, because it’s a linchpin here. “Happy.” “Blessed.” We have a lot of ideas about what those words mean. Often, they mean that good circumstances will happen for us, good things will happen to us. Or we mean that we feel good about whatever circumstances we’re in: “happy” as in, “content.” The Psalm indeed describes these blessed circumstances: the wealth and prosperity that I mentioned above, promised to us when we make other peoples’ lives happier too.
And of course those words mean those things, because the meaning of a word is all in how we use it. The scribes and Pharisees would have understood something similar: making other peoples’ lives happier was part of following the law of Moses, especially the provisions for the welfare of widows, orphans, the poor and travellers from elsewhere. By Jesus time, a lot of those laws were obeyed in only a token or half-hearted fashion, focused on being obedient for its own sake rather than substantially improving the lives of others. Or worse: doing the motions of the law in order to secure God’s blessing, or simply because it was the “thing to do” in order to keep your standing in polite society.
But those who read the law as well as the prophets more closely, understood that something more profound was at stake: the law was not merely a prescription for individual righteousness, but the means of gathering and forming the people of Israel. The law of Moses described what kind of people they ought to be. Which is how the if-then logic could go in a more communal direction: if we’re faithful to the law of Moses here and now, God will bless us with happy circumstances of a wealthy and prosperous nation here and now. He’ll even deliver us from the Roman occupation and restore us as a free people, just like He did when He brought us out of Egypt and gave us the law in the first place.
That’s already a pretty full sense of the term “blessed” or “happy.” But that glass was only half-full, especially for those looking at Israel’s history through the prism of Jesus the Messiah, His Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension. In the history of Christian interpretation, the word “blessed” has had an even fuller sense. Over the first few centuries, this sense had become an ingrained, well-trod path: they couldn’t help but take the word “blessed” to firstly refer to the blessedness of the saints in eternal life before God. For them, Psalm 112 presents a vision of the fulness not just of the kingdom of Israel but of the Kingdom of Heaven in the Age to Come; the riches, wealth and comfort of a large family is the abundance of the Communion—the family—of Saints living in God’s presence. “Their righteousness will last forever,” their lives are eternal. It describes the experience of “entering the kingdom of Heaven” for those whose righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.
The focus is on dwelling in the sight of God, in the light of God. Maybe you’ve heard our Catholic siblings talk about “beatitude,” or the step of “beatification” in the process of declaring someone a saint. All that really means is that God has drawn that person to Himself, which is what He’s doing with everyone: we are all called to “beatitude,” to being blessed. Not just “Israel of the flesh,” but everyone.
Because He draws us to Himself in the person of Jesus Christ: the gathering and formation of a people begun by the law of Moses is fulfilled in the person of Christ, for all people at all time. And it isn’t something we earn, or work ourselves up into. It’s something we first can only receive when God takes on our flesh, and then do we take part in, as active members of this new people found in Christ. Jesus the light and presence of God comes to be the light of the world first, and we become the light of the world when we enter the blessedness of His eternal light.
Luminous Beings 