In Matthew’s Gospel, after proclaiming the Kingdom of God, which we saw last Sunday, on the fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time He goes up an mountain and delivers his most profound sermon. We will get parts of The Sermon on the Mount for a few consecutive Sundays, but today we will get perhaps what might be the core of Jesus’s message, the Beatitudes.
In Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes Jesus
describes eight states or conditions of being which when lived lead to salvation. It is no coincidence they describe Jesus and
I surmise describe out states of being in heaven. These are what we will become when purified. Start living them now!
Here is today’s Gospel reading.
When
Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain,
and
after he had sat down, his disciples came to him.
He
began to teach them, saying:
"Blessed
are the poor in spirit,
for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed
are they who mourn,
for
they will be comforted.
Blessed
are the meek,
for
they will inherit the land.
Blessed
are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for
they will be satisfied.
Blessed
are the merciful,
for
they will be shown mercy.
Blessed
are the clean of heart,
for
they will see God.
Blessed
are the peacemakers,
for
they will be called children of God.
Blessed
are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed
are you when they insult you and persecute you
and
utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.
Rejoice
and be glad,
for
your reward will be great in heaven."
~Mt: 5:1-12
This week I return to
Fr. Geoffrey Plant who first orients us within Matthew’s Gospel then at about
the eleven minute mark (if you want to skip ahead) begins explaining the Sermon
on the Mount.
To me the most
insightful aspect of Fr. Geoffrey’s homily is his definition of “blessedness.”
So when [makarios] is used in the New Testament it no longer describes
the gods, or the wealthy, or those fortunate in worldly terms. It denotes the person who is aligned with
God; the one whose life is shaped by God’s reign. It refers to a joy and flourishing that
circumstances cannot touch. For that
reason it should not be translated as “happy” in the modern sense. It means “deeply flourishing,” or being in a
state of “God-given well-being.
Here is someone new
to my blog for the pastoral homily, Monsignor Roger Landry of The
Pontifical Mission Societies in the U.S. Msgr Landry speaks from his own mountain top,
a rooftop in Manhattan.
Pope St. John Paul II
considered this man to have lived out the Beatitudes, now St. Pier Giorgio
Frassati. I
have posted on him.
Sunday Meditation: “Rejoice
and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven."
John Michael Talbot
sings the beatitudes.
“Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see the face of God, they shall
see the face of God.”
