Blessed Are You: Reflections on the Readings for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

If you haven’t already read the readings, you can find them here.

Zephaniah 2:12, 3:12-13
Psalm 146
1 Corinthians 1:26-31
Matthew 5:1-12

Only a little over two more weeks and we will be in Lent. And what better way to prepare ourselves for Lent than to review the Beatitudes? From the very first reading we get advice on preparing for Lent, “Seek the LORD, all you humble of the earth ...” That is one of the objectives of Lent, seeking the Lord through humble reflections on ourselves and our constant need for repentance and change.

While there are many important lessons in the readings for today, there is one theme that runs through all of them: humility. Mankind has a tough time with humility. “A soul that is bursting with its own ego can never be filled with God … The more empty the soul is of self, the greater the room in it for God.” (Fulton Sheen, The World’s First Love)

In the first reading the prophet tells us directly to seek humility. By seeking the Lord we acknowledge our lowliness. In doing so we “may be sheltered on the day of the LORD's anger.” In Sirach, one of the books of wisdom, we read, “Humble yourself the more, the greater you are, and you will find favor with God.” (Sirach, 3:18)

It is the humble who will be the ones left, the remnant of Israel. The Lord will reward them. “They shall do no wrong and speak no lies; nor shall there be found in their mouths a deceitful tongue; they shall pasture and couch their flocks with none to disturb them.”

The psalm for today takes its response from today’s gospel reading, “Blessed are the poor in spirit; the kingdom of heaven is theirs!” However, it explains that the Lord looks out for the lowly. “The LORD keeps faith forever, secures justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets captives free.” These words likely sound familiar as we have read them in recent weeks from Isaiah and from Jesus’ own statements.

God always wants us to look out for widows and orphans and so here the psalmist says, “The fatherless and the widow the LORD sustains” and these are among the works of mercy He expects from us. Lent is a great time to reach out to those in need, through local programs, food banks, parish programs, etc.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians picks up on the theme of humility, by initially taking them down a peg, “Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” He called them fools, weak, lowly, despised, and “no accounts.” But this is part of God’s plan and a lesson for us as well, “so that no human being might boast before God.”

We saw examples of this in the Old Testament, where God told Gideon “The LORD said to Gideon: By means of the three hundred who lapped up the water I will save you and deliver Midian into your power. So let all the other soldiers go home.” (Judges 7:6) This is to emphasize that all that we have comes from God. As Jesus told His disciples at the last supper, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5, emphasis added.)

St. Faustina reflected this in her diary, “God usually chooses the weakest and simplest souls as tools for His greatest works; that we can see that this is an undeniable truth when we look at the men He chose to be His apostles; or again, when we look at the history of the Church and see what great works were done by souls that were the least capable of accomplishing them; for it is just in this way that God’s works are revealed for what they are, the works of God.” (Emphasis added.)

In today’s gospel reading, we read the Beatitudes which come from His Sermon on the Mount. I’ve always wondered what a beatitude is, and Father Sebastian Walshe, in his book, Heart of the Gospel, explains it this way, “A Beatitude is a brief instruction from our Lord in Scripture, given in poetic form, that teaches us how to find lasting and divine happiness.”

And while most people equate the Beatitudes with the Sermon on the Mount (or, in Luke, the Sermon on the Plain, Luke 6:20ff) there is much more to the sermon about how to live a life of following Christ than the Beatitudes. Some of the important lessons contained in these sermons include the main theme of today’s readings, humility.

For example, Jesus says "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Fr. Walshe explains, “The spiritually poor man prays each day to receive spiritual nourishment from the Lord: ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’” Prayer, in and of itself, is an act of humility. By prayer we acknowledge our weakness and smallness before God, as alluded to in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.

Along these same lines, Fr. Walshe goes on, “All of these ways of understanding the expression poor in spirit have three qualities in common: they all trust in God to provide for their needs; they all are detached from wealth or honor; and they all love God more than wealth or honor.” The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible describes the poor in spirit as “Those who recognize their need for God and his grace.” By these descriptions we see the need for humility before God.

Many of the other beatitudes describe those who try to imitate God in their lives by doing His works and conforming to His will. These include such things as showing mercy, being clean of heart, being peacemakers, and seeking righteousness. In doing so Jesus is telling us to follow a teaching He expounds later as His main mission on earth, doing the will of the Father.

In a similar way Dr. Peter Kreeft observes, “God has to keep reminding us of the two most obvious truths in the world: that we are not Him, and that He is not us.” (Food for the Soul, Cycle C)

Fr. Walshe sums up the beatitudes this way: “So Jesus states as clearly as possible that happiness does not consist in the goods this world has to offer; in fact, it somehow consists in the opposite of what this world has to offer.” In fact, St. James tells us that the world is in opposition to God. “Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” (James 4:4)

Recall that Jesus has called us out of this world. “If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” (John 15:19)

We will hear more from the Sermon on the Mount in coming weeks as we approach Ash Wednesday and Lent. Pay attention, as that may give you things on which you can focus and work on to improve your spiritual strength during Lent.