Fulfilling our potential

FULFILLING OUR POTENTIAL

Mt. 5: 1-12

Jesus practised what He preached.  Whatever He challenged others to do, He first did it Himself.  The content of His message and quality of His life were one and the same.  Practising what we preach should be the ambition of every preacher.  What we preach are ideals, but because we are sinners we can only attempt to follow those ideals. 

In today’s Gospel Jesus presents us with what is known as the Beatitudes.  I have always looked upon these few words as the short autobiography of Jesus.  When Jesus talks about who is blessed, He is giving us a description of Himself.  In the beatitudes Jesus talks about the good life – the kind of life that He had and the kind of life that all of us would like to have.  The word that He used to describe it is I think best translated as ‘blessed’.  It carried the idea of complete happiness, nothing lacking, a life of supreme wholeness.

The Beatitudes are surprising on two counts – what they leave out and what they include.  They leave out comfort, riches, romantic love, public acclaim – many of the things that most of us consider necessary to enjoy the good life.  They include a sense of need, sadness, a deep longing for the unrealised, enduring persecution – the kind of things that most of us associate with misery and unhappiness.  Could it be that we have misconceived the good life; that we really don’t know what it is? 

In today’s Gospel Jesus shares the secret of His blessedness, and tells us how we can become like Him.  However improbable that may seem to us, He believed in its possibility.  He would not have said these things if He did not believe that all of us could experience life at its best.  The distinctive characteristic of Jesus is that He repeatedly saw possibilities in people, regardless of age and circumstance.  He looked at a prodigal in a pig sty, and saw in him the potential to go home and accept his responsibilities.  He looked at an adulterous woman, and saw in her the potential to be faithful.  He looked at four men casting their nets in the sea, and saw in them the potential to become fishers of men.  He met a greedy tax collector perched in a sycamore tree, and saw in him the potential of generosity.  He looked into the faces of many people, and saw in them the potential to experience life at its best.  He never lost that attitude when He looked at anyone.  Every person to Jesus was a bundle of marvellous possibilities.

How do we explain this attitude of Jesus?  Was He just an unusually kind Man who wanted people to feel better about themselves?   He was most certainly infinitely kind, but kindness is not the explanation of His high regard for people.  Jesus had insight.  The possibilities that He saw in people were not figments of an overly generous imagination.  They were real.  They were there waiting to be discovered and developed.  When He said, “Blessed are the merciful”, He did not have in mind a select few, who happened to possess that particular virtue.  He was talking to everyone.  He knew that every man and woman had the potential to become a merciful person.  All they needed to do was to recognise that possibility in themselves, develop it and be merciful.  This is so true of you and me.  Buried within us is the quality of mercy.  The potential is there, waiting to be discovered and developed.

This gift of unrealised possibilities is the true measure of our worth.  We need to remind ourselves of that, because we tend to measure ourselves by other standards.  One of the most common standards is material possessions.  So often when we speak of a person’s worth, that is what we usually have in mind.  Material possessions are important, in so far as bills have to be paid, but surely we are worth more than the bottom line of a financial statement?

Another standard by which we measure ourselves and other people are deeds – what has been done in the past.  This is a fairly reliable measurement.  It certainly is better than material possessions, but not the best. Think what Saul of Tarsus had done.  He held the coats of the angry mob that stoned Stephen to death.  His deeds were to destroy the Christian Church.  The record of his deeds was stained with innocent blood.  But Saul was to discover that he had the potential of what he could become.  He was given the insight to see that Jesus lived in each one and that by persecuting people, he was persecuting Jesus.  That was the real measure of his worth.

A better standard by which we measure ourselves is character – what a person is within himself or herself.  When Augustine left Africa and boarded a ship for Rome, his character left much to be desired.  He was a reckless and irresponsible young man, bent on nothing but his own sensual pleasure.  But that was not the St. Augustine we now know.  He was given the light to change His ways and live like Christ.  His real worth was his potential of what he could become.

What matters most in your life and mine is not what we have, not what we have done, not even what we are.  Our true worth is what each of us can become by the grace of God.

This undeveloped potential can be seen in the restlessness of people.  We are never really satisfied.  We never realise complete blessedness.  There is always a mountain to climb.  Young people dream and plan to become someone special.  Even when old age has impaired our abilities, we look back and remember what might have been.  Then we look to the future with hope of what is yet to be.  Human life is an enterprise with which we never get finished.  It is an endless process of becoming. 

Lord Jesus to be like You is our goal.  You are always above us and beyond us, but You are also beside us as our Helper and Friend.  Until we become like You, we will never be truly blessed.

PLEASE VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE