Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today, Jesus reminds us that the rich and powerful are not blessed or holy. Instead, those who are lowly, humble and just are blessed in God’s eyes.
To the point: What identifies God’s chosen “remnant” is not wealth, possessions, or power over others but lowliness, humility, justice, and truthfulness (see first reading). Jesus elaborates God’s call to this way of living when he proclaims the Beatitudes to his disciples. Our blessedness is both a quality of who we are and a blueprint for how we are to live as followers of Jesus. We are to be the “remnant” of who carry forth God’s eternal plan for establishing a just reign.
Connecting the Gospel (Matthew 5 1-12) to the First Reading: The blessings Jesus announces continue an ancient tradition reflected in the first reading: God extends protection and refuge to the “humble and lowly.”
Connecting the Gospel to experience: When hearing these Beatitudes, many of us would not count ourselves among the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, etc. Nor do we tend to see ourselves as blessed. However, our very living of the Gospel is a revelation of our blessedness and of the presence of God’s reign.
Centering prayers
The Gospel
(Matthew 5:1-12a)
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain. He began to teach them.
Christ, our teacher, you are a peacemaker.
You hunger and you thirst for justice.
Yet you are meek and merciful and strong
and powerful in all that counts.
Please be a blest beatitude for each of us.
Let us live in you and be beatitudes for one another.
The First Reading
(Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13)
But I will leave a remnant in your midst a people humble and lowly,
who shall take refuge in the name of the Lord.
The rich can put all their trust in their money.
The poor have trust in God alone.
They hope, expect, wait for, and then reap what they need.
Lord, make us poor in spirit.
The Second Reading
(1 Corinthians 1:26-31)
Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters.
From stable to cross you walked with the lowly:
the despised and the no account.
Give us your grace to answer your call,
to live in you. Be our wisdom and our righteousness.
Be the love we take to the world.
Copyright © 2023, Anne M. Osdieck
Poem: Blessed are you who bear the light
By JAN RICHARDSON
Blessed are you
who bear the light
in unbearable times,
who testify
to its endurance
amid the unendurable,
who bear witness
to its persistence
when everything seems
in shadow
and grief.
Blessed are you
in whom
the light lives,
in whom
the brightness blazes—
your heart
a chapel,
an altar where
in the deepest night
can be seen
the fire that
shines forth in you
in unaccountable faith,
in stubborn hope,
in love that illumines
every broken thing
it finds.
Music for reflection