Sunday Homilies by Fr. Rudolf V. D’ Souza

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4th Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 3, 2008 Year: A
Zeph 2:3; 3:12-13; 1 Cor1:26-31; Mt 5:1-12
Blessed are the poor in spirit 

First Reading...
"Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his commands; seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the Lord's wrath. For I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord - the remnant of Israel; they shall do no wrong and utter no lies, nor shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouths. Then they will pasture and lie down, and no one shall make them afraid." [Zeph. 2:3; 3:12-13]

Second Reading...
"Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

God is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord." [1 Cor. 1:26-31]

Gospel Reading...
"When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and he taught them, saying: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you." [Mt. 5:1-12a]

Helpful Incident:
I don’t remember to have shared this incident that happened at Andheri (Mumbai) in 2003. Dev Sahib was a builder, and was having plenty of money. He then tried to make all that money white and collected approximately 5 crores of Rupees. He was then practically a very rich man. But he was leading a miserable life. Early morning and noon and at night he would take food from the roadside stalls. He would never part with his money, even to his own family members. He was separated from his wife and was living alone. His construction business thrived in leap and bounds. But his health deteriorated. One night he has a massive heart attack and died. His body was discovered after two day. His family members were not sad. The only talk during his funeral was about his money, where he had kept it all. What he had done. All that work and riches went without any positive use. None of the family members enjoyed his wealth when he was alive and none of them enjoyed it even after his death. What is the use of gaining the whole world and losing ones happiness?

Today people have lost the sense of cultivating healthy families. They give more importance to getting more wealth than getting more of love and understanding. Hence, today we more problems than solutions. Money and wealth alone cannot guarantee a happy life.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit." [Mt. 5:2] The readings from the Holy Scriptures favour the poor in spirit versus the proud. From the Book of Zephaniah, we hear God's promise of leaving in our midst a humble and lowly people. [Zeph. 3:12] The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, we hear that God chose what is meek in the world. [1 Cor. 1:27] And from the Gospel of Matthew, we learn that the poor in spirit are blessed for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs." [Mt. 5:3]

Augustine was said to have described the Sermon on the Mount as a perfect standard of the Christian life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer based his classic book The Cost of Discipleship on an exposition of the Sermon on the Mount. Even unbelievers like Gandhi were greatly impressed and impacted by the message of the Sermon on the Mount. Other unbelievers have also been impacted. I was thinking of the statement Nikita Krushchev made a number of years ago while in the United States, when he said, “I’ll tell you what the difference between Christians and me is, and that is if you slap me on the face, I’ll hit you back so hard your head will fall off.” He was impacted by the Sermon on the Mount. He knew what it said, and he didn’t like it at all. The truth is that the natural man does not like its message. This is not the message one would take to write a best selling book—even a Christian book. The message of the Sermon on the Mount is not one that sells. You only have to look on the shelves at the bookstores to discover that for yourself.

R. Kent Hughes, in his excellent commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, says this is the greatest sermon ever preached:

The Sermon on the Mount is the compacted, congealed theology of Christ and as such is perhaps the most profound section of the entire New Testament and the whole Bible. Every phrase can bare exhaustive exposition and yet never be completely plumbed…. It shows us exactly where we stand in relation to the kingdom and eternal life. As we expose ourselves to the X-rays of Christ’s words, we see whether we truly are believers; and if believers, the degree of the authenticity of our lives. No other section of Scripture makes us face ourselves like the Sermon on the Mount.

Let’s just make a couple of introductory comments about the Sermon on the Mount as a whole, and we will deal with some of these issues as time goes on. You remember the occasion for the Sermon on the Mount comes after the commencement of our Lord Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. He had departed, withdrawn from Judea, at the news of the arrest of John the Baptist. In His time in Galilee, He had been healing all kinds of diseases and gathering a large following of people—not just from within Galilee, but from without—from Decapolis, from outside, from Judea, from Jerusalem, and from Syria. So you had a very large following, and it says at the end of Matthew 4 that during this time Jesus had been teaching and preaching in the synagogue.

So these people had definitely heard something about Jesus, and they had heard something from Jesus. But it seems to me that when you come to the Sermon on the Mount, you get the whole thing in a summary fashion: “Here’s what Jesus’ message is about.” So the Sermon on the Mount is recorded by Matthew, and there is a similar sermon in Luke 6 that seems to sum up the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ in many, many ways. I think it proves to be the basis for our Lord’s future teaching and ministry as He goes about. Those who were there include the disciples and a large crowd that is listening as well; it seems to me you have to say He is speaking to both. Jesus later will say, “Let him, who has ears to hear, hear what I am saying.” There were those amongst the crowd who did have ears to hear, and there were those who did not, but He was speaking to His disciples and to the crowds as well.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus speaks about the kingdom of heaven, and in the other Gospels, one reads about the kingdom of God. Some would distinguish between those. There are those who would then say because it is our Lord’s teaching about the kingdom of God, it is teaching about the kingdom of God that is yet to come. Some dispensationalists say that while there is some derivative (a secondary application of this passage of these texts), the primary application is for the kingdom days.

I can remember in seminary, for example, hearing Fr. Ralph D'Costa my professor say, “If a businessman today practiced the Sermon on the Mount, he would go broke.” I thought to myself, “That’s exactly right.” And if a church today followed New Testament principles, there are many who would say you couldn’t exist; you couldn’t exist doing the things the New Testament says churches are to do. But that’s exactly what Christianity is about. It’s about God doing the impossible through those who obey Him, and mainly through His Spirit and His grace as He works in us. I am not very inclined to set aside pieces even of this passage and say, “This is the future.” In fact, you will notice that when Jesus talks about the kingdom of heaven, He talks both in future and present terms. Jesus is talking about the character of those who are in the kingdom of God, and He is talking about the character of those who are true believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.

There is a certain pattern in the Beatitudes. For instance, if you look at verse 3 of chapter 5, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them,”—present tense. Then, when you come down to verse 10, He says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.

One of the key words we must deal with is the word “blessed” because it occurs over and over and over again. You will find that in a number of translations, the word is rendered “happy,” and there is a sense in which that is probably true. But, I think you have to say that the word “happy,” just because of the meaning we give to it today, is probably not the best word. In fact, you would have to say that those who mourn are not really happy. It’s hard to be both, so I reject as a preference making the emphasis on happiness, although there certainly is that. If you want to be more “Piperian,” you would say that there is a sense in which there is always joy and delight—that’s always there, and I would certainly be willing to see that in this text. I’m with Hughes in his commentary when he says that probably the primary sense of the word “blessed” here is the sense of approval. It is saying that God has expressed His approval on these people. To be blessed is to be approved by God, and I think that probably fits my view as well.

Now, let’s consider the expression “poor in spirit.” “Blessed are the poor in spirit for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them” (verse 3). I think the word “poor” here is one that seems to speak of abject poverty. The word, as a number of scholars have pointed out, seems to almost indicate a cringing or a stooping down. It is a sort of beggarly kind of poverty. Now, there are lots of people who consider themselves poor in this world who wouldn’t qualify for this kind of poor. There are those who, by government standards, have an income that is lower than a certain amount, but I would say a very high percentage of those people who qualify as poor probably have televisions and a number of other things that would not exactly, in our minds, be in the category of the trappings of the poor.

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