Episodes
Friday Jan 27, 2017
January 29 - Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time : Commandments of Love
Friday Jan 27, 2017
Friday Jan 27, 2017
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First Reading Zephaniah 2:3, 3:12-13
There will be a people who remain sheltered from God's anger.
Responsorial Psalm Psalm 146:6-10
The Lord is faithful forever.
Second Reading 1 Corinthians 1:26-31
God chooses the weak to show his power.
Gospel Reading Matthew 5:1-12a
Today's reading is the beginning of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, which is found in
Matthew's Gospel. Jesus describes those who are truly fortunate, the lucky ones of their
day. “Blessed” is sometimes translated as happy, fortunate, or favored. But it is not
emperors, conquerors, priests, and the wealthy who enjoy this favor. Rather, it is the
common people, those whom earthly success has largely passed by: the poor, the meek,
the persecuted, and the peacemakers. Jesus is saying that divine favor is upon those
who are poor, those who mourn, those who are persecuted. This news might have been
welcome—and surprising—to the crowds who heard Jesus that day.
How can this be? The answer is that even though they may have been denied worldly
success, what cannot be taken away from them is their potential to live rightly by one
another. It is all too easy for those who enjoy the pleasures of this world from their
hilltop mansions to float above such obligations. Jesus goes on to say that so long as
ordinary people stand for the right things and do not retreat in their rightness before
those who seem to have more power, what is right will prevail. It’s their kingdom — a
kingdom organized not from the top down, but from the bottom up. In the Beatitudes,
Jesus offers a description of the community of goodwill His teachings will build in this
world – if we follow them
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