Blessed are You…

Those three words begin each stanza of what has come to be called the Beatitudes. In our Orthodox Liturgy we recite these each time we celebrate the Divine Liturgy.

Yesterday during the Liturgy for the Saturday of the Dead, I think I heard them for the first time. It is interesting to me how we can hear, but not hear, until we are ready to hear them.

I would like to focus on one of these in particular: “Blessed are you when you suffer insults and persecution and every kind of calumny for my sake.” This is the leadership axiom and one that those of us who are in leadership positions needs to remember.

It seems that when you are a leader, and this can be any kind of leader, you are open to attacks almost on a daily basis. Now I don’t mean attacks of bodily harm although one could argue this. Leaders make decisions and those decisions are not always popular. People will make up stories about you and tell tales about you no matter what you do or don’t do. We need to be able to accept these and be able to put them in the right place.

There is an old saying that it is lonely at the top and this is very true. The person who leads is out front all alone, sometime they have people around them and others they do not. But in His own words Jesus calls us Blessed. I like that!

Jesus Himself was scorned and hated by people, and in the end one of His own turned on Him and one of His own denied Him. As Christian leaders we need only to look at the example that Jesus left us. He loved all. He did not always agree, nor will we always agree, but our discussions and disagreements should be in love and not out of some agenda that we hope to be able to work out.

Blessed are you when you suffer insults…