I have talked in these posting a lot about how ‘hard and expensive’ it is to be poor. Today I drove a friend to the dentist. She has severe fibromyalgia, a brain illness that causes chronic pain and a heightened and painful response to pressure. She needs to go in a wheel chair to the back of her Chevrolet Blazer where she can lay down in the backseat. Everything she does is full of pain. In the elevator today I brushed the back of her head accidentally and she immediately felt the increased pressure. It is hard to be chronically ill.

I mentioned how the other day I helped salvage material from my 86 year old friend’s house that was in a fire. Having a house burn down is a dramatic experience for anyone, especially for an elderly person. Any major change and adjustment in life is hard when one is old. It is hard to be old.

For some young African American adults is extremely hard to be black. Being stopped by police officer for being suspicious, finding jobs or getting a good education is hard. It is refreshing to see the new civil rights movement which can be seen in a movement like #Black Lives Matter.

It is hard to have a prison record. No matter what is said, employers do discriminate against a person with a prison record. It is hard to be an ex-convict.

It is hard to have a mental illness. Brain illnesses are not treated the same way as other illnesses or injuries. People with a mental illness are identified with their illness and called ‘mentally ill’. We would never call a person with cancer, ‘cancerous’. Stigma is hard to live with.

I can go on with people who in our society find it hard to be who they are. But from the above I can say it is very hard, to be poor, black, young or old, ill with a prison record. These are the persons who we are talking about when we say Jesus’ ‘preferential option for the poor’ or we call bless, while we allow society to treat them with inequality and make life ‘hard’ for them.

Perhaps a forgotten beatitude in the Gospel is “Blessed are those who have a hard life, they will have a life of ease.

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