Mass as dangerous to one's mass attendance. The flexible mike. Why are the poor blessed? What about the rich? Hard words from the preaching Jesus.

At mass the other day, a minute or so into reading to fellow worshipers from Genesis about Cain and Abel, I noticed something on my right, turned and saw Father X, who had got up from his bench across the sanctuary and was reaching up to push the mike back up in my face, from which I had removed it.

Reminded me of the deacon ages ago in a far off place who had noted I was head-down and praying and not joining in the peace ritual with my fellow worshipers. This minister of the altar, replete with mass garments on, had left the altar area and had come at me in my pew and was slapping both hands on my shoulders, pow!

It was his way of enforcing the ritual, hands on shoulder, warning wake up, you dumb traditionalist, and smell the incense!

So it was Fr. X's way, gliding stealthily fixing things the other day presumably when he thought the reader wasn't loud enough. Let it be a message to all.

Not quite. Nothing surreptitious about it or him, as it happens. Inaccurate judgment call, rather, prudence gone awry in an environment whose rules and regs have taken hits almost regularly since the new mass made its entry into RC worship in 1969.

Immediately, reflexively, I pushed the mike back, putting a close to our little drama in full visibility of worshiping parishioners, watching from all over the little church.

"What next?" you might ask, as I do now.

Days later, on a Sunday, a different, less ludicrous issue arose, regarding the gospel message as interpreted by the preacher.

The passage, Luke 6:17-26:

Then he lifted up his eyes towards his disciples, and said; Blessed are you who are poor; the kingdom of God is yours.

See how you’re blessed? Not by act of Congress.

Blessed are you who are hungry now; you will have your fill. Blessed are you who weep now; you will laugh for joy.

Your time will come.

Blessed are you, when men hate you and cast you off and revile you, when they reject your name as something evil, for the Son of Man’s sake.

When that day comes, rejoice and exult over it; for behold, a rich reward awaits you in heaven; their fathers treated the prophets no better.

Heaven, yes.

But woe upon you who are rich; you have your comfort already.

One of the many times He warns them. They have a big problem.

Woe upon you who are filled full; you shall be hungry. Woe upon you who laugh now; you shall mourn and weep.

Hard words. He uses tough imagery, chooses his words, tells us often that idle words are fraught with danger.

Woe upon you, when all men speak well of you; their fathers treated the false prophets no worse.

We love to be loved, we cherish it. Virtue is good. Virtue signaling is not.

The preacher might miss the point Jesus was making, that this life is mainly a passage to heaven and what you suffer here offers eternal bliss — not, or secondarily, a call to alleviate suffering of others.

Characterizing the also-rans (wretches of the earth), my preacher said that in the USA today, they'd be deported — bad enough — then tosses in a stat that one percent of the population own 40% of the wealth.

I couldn’t see what that has to do with what Jesus said in the beatitudes and wondered why give us a stat with no source named that is a staple of left-wing socialism?

I'm saying you do not do justice to this series of benedictions if you make it a call to social action, or even to works of mercy as such, crucial as they are.

Jesus does not call people blessed because help is on its way. They are blessed, he said, because when they die, they will see God.

Some have mocked the idea when used as an excuse for not helping people, singing about pie in the sky when you die, adding “that’s a lie.”

It isn't. It’s the belief that “when you're dead, you rascal you” — prefixed by “I’ll be glad,” another game-changing insertion —that you will find your reward, one that dwarfs any here and now compensation. The preacher should make that clear.

The poor are blessed not because a certain law is passed but because God sees them and marks them for more than pie when they die. Much more.