Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 5, 1-12
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.
Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Blessed
1. Blessed. The word that is repeated in today’s Gospel is “blessed” meaning: happy, joyful, because when you truly meet Jesus, He changes your life. In the path of Christian life, of our ordinary daily life, we are called to be happy, yet our path is also marked by tears and suffering, by a constant struggle that we must face every day. Many believe that there’s no suffering in a happy life. That’s not so! The tears of our suffering water our heart. We know that following Christ, we begin to live true happiness here, but the fullness of that happiness is in heaven.
2. He sat down. Before doing anything, Jesus “goes up the mountain”, and prays. Then He teaches his disciples. If you really want to do something for others, distance yourself from what is bothering you, and learn to express and teach from your experience with God and with life. You can contribute a lot, but from your experience, rather than from what intellectual pride tells you. Plato affirmed that whoever learns and learns, but does not practice what he has learned, is like the one who plows and plows and does not sow. Wisdom has to do with personal experiences.
3. Giving of yourself. You can be friendly with everyone, but not everyone can be your friend. At the time of the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, on September 11, one of the firefighters noticed that his partner was missing. When he saw this situation, he told his boss that he was going back to look for him. His boss said that the likelihood of his friend being alive was nil, because everything had been destroyed. The fireman disobeyed and left. After a while he returned carrying his friend, who was already dead. The chief asked him why he had risked his own life since there was no possibility of finding his friend alive. He said, “when I got to him, he was alive, and it was worth it, because he saw me and said, ‘I knew you would come back for me’”. Think how many friends are waiting for you to come back for them. This is being blessed. You know you can help many people before their marriage dies, or before they go into therapy or before they think of taking their own life, before their company collapses, before something in their life dies. There are people who need you more than you can imagine. To be blessed is to know that you give yourself to others from your experience of God, who gives you all the strength to go on.
Remember that something good is on the way!
God bless you and be with you in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
