Many assume that the opposite of love is hate, but it’s not. The opposite of love is apathy.
 
Similarly, the opposite of faith may not be what you assume. And its faith’s opposite that underlies and drives the narrative in this week’s Gospel reading.
 
Is it driving you, too?

"No, no, we are not satisfied and will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Martin Luther King Jr. found inspiration from the prophet Amos as he anticipated a mighty work of God in his generation. Amos wrote a fearsome warning to those who refused to live in God's just and peaceable kingdom, but King saw these words as one who was the victim of injustice and thus found them a triumphant rallying cry. 

It's all about perspective, I suppose. 

We pray each week that God's kingdom would come and his will would be done. The answer to this prayer is certain. Are we ready for it? God's justice will flood the earth, and if we are not careful it might roll over us. Let us therefore learn to follow a righteous King that we may celebrate and not mourn on the great Day of the Lord.

The Beatitudes are among the literary and religious treasures of the human race. We can savor them, affirm them, meditate on them, and engrave them on plaques to hang on our walls. But a major question remains: How are we supposed to live in response to them?
 
This isn’t an idle question. Misunderstanding the “blesseds” given by Jesus in Matthew 5 has caused pain and confusion down through the ages that continues today.
 
Strangely enough, his blesseds have not uniformly been a blessing.
 
It’ll help us know what to do—and what not to do—with the Beatitudes if we can discover what Jesus himself was doing with them.

Things we hear all the time—even important things—can become so familiar we stop really paying attention. Seriously. Think about the last time you were actually absorbed in what the flight attendant said just before takeoff.

There’s a vital part of Christian liturgy—28 words so important that Jesus said every other word in the Bible hangs from them—the Church has repeated week after week almost without exception. Year after year. Decade after decade. For millennia.

Yada. Yada. Yada.
This week though, we’re gonna pay attention. 

This final session explores Type 7 and adds some concluding thoughts.