Who Is Most Blessed?
The story of the Zoramites who cast the poor out of their synagogues brings up a knotty question. Who on this earth is most blessed? Are the wealthy, able to satisfy their needs and their whims, lacking for nothing and certain they are self-sufficient, really better off than the poor who are drawn out by a yearning need to find God? The well-dressed Zoramites with their perfectly lovely self-images, who proclaim their superiority from the heights of the Rameumptom, look down at the poor and call them “filth.” Their clothes are so bad, they cannot be admitted to Church but must be cast off like so much litter. And yet, of the two groups, it is not the self-anointed Zoramite pious who come to find God and the true gospel. They are too blinded by their lovely images to see the true light. No, it is the humble who take time to hear the prophets and heed the word. The story is repeated in the world today. It is not those whose lives are a deck chair on a sunny cruise line who respond first
