Contemplating today's Gospel
Today's Gospel + homily (in 300 words)
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all encouragement, who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God. For as Christ’s sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow. If we are afflicted, it is for your encouragement and salvation; if we are encouraged, it is for your encouragement, which enables you to endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is firm, for we know that as you share in the sufferings, you also share in the encouragement.
Glorify the Lord with me, let us together extol his name. I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.
Look to him that you may be radiant with joy, and your faces may not blush with shame. When the poor one called out, the Lord heard, and from all his distress he saved him.
The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. Taste and see how good the Lord is; blessed the man who takes refuge in him.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit”
Fr. Àngel CALDAS i Bosch (Salt, Girona, Spain)Today, with the proclamation of the Beatitudes, Jesus helps us realize how forgetful we can be and how we tend to be like children, who usually forget their memories because of their plays. Jesus feared that the amount of His “good news” —His words, His gestures, His silences— would be diluted amidst our sins and worries. In the parable of the Sower, do you remember the image of the thorns that sprang up with His seeds, and choked them? Well, this is why St. Matthew runs the Beatitudes as fundamental principles, so that we do not ever forget them. They are a compendium of the New Law presented by Jesus, basic points which help us live a Christian life.
The Beatitudes are intended for everybody. The Master is not only teaching His disciples around Him, nor does He exclude any kind of persons, but He delivers a Universal message. However, He emphasizes the disposition we must have and the moral behavior He expects from us. While the definite salvation is not given in this world, but in the next, we must change, right now, while we are here, our mentality and our evaluation of things. It is necessary we get used to seeing the crying face of Christ, in those who mourn, in those poor of spirit, in the meek at heart, in those who yearn to become saints, in those who have taken a “determined determination”, as St. Therese of the Child Jesus liked to say, so that we can become Sowers of Peace and Joy.
The Beatitudes are the Lord's perfume participated in human history. But, also in yours and mine. The last two verses incorporate the presence of the Cross, as they invite us to rejoice when, because of Him and of the Gospel, things go humanly wrong. For when the coherence of our Christian life is strong, we will then, most probably suffer persecution in a thousand different ways, amid unexpected difficulties and setbacks. St. Matthew's text is emphatic: so “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven” (Mt 5:12).
Thoughts on Today's Gospel
“For God is seen by those who are enabled to see Him when they have the eyes of their soul opened: for all have eyes; but in some they are overspread, and do not see the light of the sun.” (Saint Theophilus of Antioch)
“The individual Beatitudes are the fruit of the looking of Jesus upon the disciples; they describe their actual condition: they are poor, hungry, weeping men; they are hated and persecuted... In spite of the concrete threatening situation, this becomes a promise when you look at it with the provident light which comes from the Father.” (Benedict XVI)
“The Beatitudes depict the countenance of Jesus Christ and portray his charity. They express the vocation of the faithful associated with the glory of his Passion and Resurrection; they shed light on the actions and attitudes characteristic of the Christian life; they are the paradoxical promises that sustain hope in the midst of tribulations (…)” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nº 1717)
September 1st
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
Gospel and commentary video
_______