Blessed by God 4th Sunday Year A
Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13; Psalm 146; 1 Corinthians 1:26-31; Matthew 5:1-12a
In today’s gospel passage, Jesus goes up a mountain, sits down, and on the mountain gives the beatitudes. This action of Jesus, Brant Pitre comments, reminds us of Moses, who also went up a mountain and, shortly after, gave the Ten Commandments to the Israelites. However, unlike Jesus, Moses gave the Ten Commandments from the base of Mount Sinai. Jesus, though, gives the beatitudes from the top of a mountain. Likely, Jesus is described as giving the Beatitudes from the top of a mountain rather than from the bottom because the Beatitudes can only be properly understood from the perspective of heaven, the afterlife.[i]
For example, the beatitude “blessed are the poor in spirit” is directly followed by “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” not the kingdom of earth. In addition, we are blessed when we are persecuted for the sake of righteousness by being granted “the kingdom of heaven”. Also, we are told by Jesus to “rejoice and be glad” when people “utter every kind of evil against” us because of Jesus, “for [our] reward will be great in heaven”, not on earth.
Echoing Jesus, James in his letter, singles out the poor in a special way, “Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him?” (James 2:5) According to James, Scott Hahn comments, “God often shows a kind of preferential option for the poor.” [ii] Aquinas, citing Dionysius and Psalm 73, teaches that God at times does not allow followers of Jesus to receive material wealth so that this wealth does not weaken their spiritual wealth, including being “rich in faith,” rich in trusting God.[iii] God also at times permits those who have chosen not to follow his son Jesus’ peaceful, meek ways to accumulate more earthly wealth, not as a blessing but rather as a punishment, since those who receive more and more earthly wealth are more prone to become attached to the things of this world while become less and less interested in heavenly reality, in the life that will come after this earthly life.
One of the beatitudes, though, does not explicitly refer to a heavenly reward: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.” What does this beatitude mean, especially considering the reality that those who obtain a lot of land, money, and power often do so by not being meek but rather being violent, forceful, and aggressive? According to Pitre, however, the expression “inherit the land” “was a standard Jewish image for the new creation, the new heavens and new earth that Isaiah, and other prophets, said would happen at the end of time after the resurrection, that the whole world would be made new through the Messiah.” [iv]
Heavenly Father, help us to perceive the hardships that we undergo as blessings from you so that we become less attached to the goods of this world and more attached to your son Jesus Christ, and his meek, humble, loving, truthful ways.
May God Bless You All – Father Peter
[i] Brant Pitre, “4th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A),” catholicproductions.com.
[ii] Scott Hahn, Faith Works: Bible Study on the Letter of James (Saint Joseph Communications), 6 CD set.
[iii] Thomas Aquinas, “Summa Thelogiae,” newadvent.org, https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2087.htm#article7, I-II, Question 87, Article 7. “Temporal and bodily goods are indeed goods of man, but they are of small account: whereas spiritual goods are man’s chief goods. Consequently, it belongs to Divine justice to give spiritual goods to the virtuous, and to award them as many temporal goods or evils as suffices for virtue: for, as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. viii), ‘Divine justice does not enfeeble the fortitude of the virtuous man, by material gifts.’ The very fact that others receive temporal goods, is detrimental to their spiritual good; wherefore the psalm quoted concludes (verse 6): ‘Therefore pride hath held them fast.’”
[iv] Brant Pitre, “4th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A),” catholicproductions.com.
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