Fourth Sunday Ordinary

Year A

[Zephaniah 2 : 3 ; 3 : 12-13 ; 

Psalm 146 (145) : 7-10 ;

I Corinthians 1 : 26-31 ;

Matthew 5 : 1-12]

Our Gospel for today has been one of the most influential and most alluring in the New Testament: it contains the beatitudes that begin the Sermon on the Mount in Saint Matthew. This was a Scriptural passage, for example, that was dear to Mahatma Gandhi who is known all over the world for his non-violent struggle for independence from the British rule in India.  

For us Christians, this passage is important because it is Christ telling us how to be happy. He is someone who cannot be wrong telling us how to achieve that which each of us most basically wants.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven...

Blessed are the meek. They will inherit the earth...

Blessed are the merciful. They will receive mercy...

Blessed are the pure in heart. They will see God…

Blessed are the peacemakers…"

Christ encourages us to be who we are created to be – a people of love, mercy and compassion. He asks us to live these values, as best as we can, for ourselves and for others. Here we are invited into a world of reversals: the captives are freed, the hungry are filled and the rich sent away empty. Lion lies down with the cow. That is a plenitude and that is ours for the taking, provided we consent to listen to what the Son of man says. The beatitudes are a way to receive God’s fountain of peace within us so that we can then pass them on to other men and women (John 4:14).

It has been said that the beatitudes are about us and yet not about us at all. To understand this, we must try to look at the beatitudes from the other end. Each time I listen to the beatitudes, I am happy, I am content, and I am satisfied, because I usually see myself as the victim who deserves to be helped, I see myself as the sad one who needs to be comforted, I see myself as a person who has been denied justice, and treated badly. But what if the beatitudes were also a call to go beyond me and to go beyond you? What if I am the one denying others their justice today? What if I am the one who fails to comfort others? What if I am the one oppressing others? When we read the beatitudes, if we think also of the others who are part of our universe, if we place ourselves in the position of the victims, if we are no more blind to the ones who need to be shown kindness and mercy, we become his disciples.

By the beatitudes Jesus is indicating to us that true happiness in found in God and not elsewhere. True happiness comes from seeking God and his righteousness. It comes from being merciful, from being gentle of heart, from being poor in spirit and from being a peace-maker.

In the words of Pope Francis, the beatitudes reveal to us the real spiritual features of Jesus, and invite us to be like him.

Blessed are you,  said Jesus, but the one truly blessed par excellence is Jesus himself. He is the truly poor in spirit, he is the meek one, he is the one who is merciful, he is also the pure of heart, the peace-maker, the one persecuted for justice’s sake, and he is the one who is hungry and thirsty.

We can look upon him as God-within-us because through our baptism and through the holy eucharist, he lives in us. Hence, we also possess those spiritual features that are his. Let us therefore go to live and practise them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen

(See Tiburtius Fernandez, Homilies for Year A, Fourth Sunday Ordinary, © St. Paul’s Publications, Bandra, Mumbai, India, 2022, pp. 147-151).