Matthew 5:1-12

 FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – YEAR A

Commentary of Fr. Fernando Armellini

When Jesus saw the crowd, he went up the mountain. He sat down and the disciples came to him. He spoke and began to teach them as follows: “Blessed are the poor in heart, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. Blessed are the afflicted, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the destitute, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of good, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. Blessed are you when you are reviled and persecuted and slandered in every way for my sake. Rejoice and be glad, for the reward that awaits you in heaven is plentiful.” 

A good Sunday to all sisters and brothers. 

We seek only one thing in life: joy; we want to be happy. And this impulse was put in us by God. Since we can't always be satisfied, we have the promise that God made us for infinity; therefore, He has made us for Himself. Some—and I believe many—are unaware that we are made for the infinite and are content with what we may call the joy of brief time. 

We all seek this joy, but we should not consider it our life's ultimate, definitive goal. When we study, we seek the diploma, and when we get it, we feel great joy. But immediately afterward, we need to look for another source of joy. It can be professional fulfillment, which is a beautiful thing, but when we are retired, no one is looking for us, and we are no longer important to anyone; we realize that professional success is a fleeting joy, and it ends. 

We also seek joy in social relationships, but when the people with whom we have spent the happiest years of our lives begin to disappear, these social relationships become smaller and smaller and even disappear altogether. It is enough to think about the loneliness, sometimes dramatic, of the experience of these people who go to these rest homes. 

Therefore, professional fulfillment is also a passing glory. The glory that we find in the pleasure that life offers us is also fleeting, but when the years go by, and the strength declines, there is no more taste for anything. Let us remember Barzillai, David's friend, who at 84 years old says to the king: 'Try to benefit my son; he is young and enjoys life; I am old.’ If we aim at these glories in a short time, we will find ourselves disillusioned at a certain moment.

We come to a point when it is necessary to confront ourselves with a question mark: What was the meaning of my life? It is a question that can be covered up, distracted by so many satisfactions in a short time, but in the end, this question imposes itself. The one who has propped up his life on this hope, on these joys, cannot but conclude that life has no meaning. Precisely what the Qoheleth said: "All is vanity." 

These dissatisfactions can even lead to despair... what have I lived for? The text of today's Gospel presents the answer that Jesus gives to this need for meaning in our lives. With eight beatitudes, Jesus teaches us how to fill our lives with meaning. He puts the image of the successful person before us, and it is the one he calls 'blessed.’ Blessed' means 'congratulations,' you have succeeded in life; you have found it in something great that remains, something that time will not cancel, something definitive. Blessed are you because you leave in the world a sign of your passage through this world. A sign of something that remains is the history of God. The history of this world's great ones disappears, but God's history remains. 

It proposes to us, therefore, that the happy, blessed person, successful, with eight perspectives, are the eight beatitudes that we will examine individually. These beatitudes that present us with the successful person are the presentation of the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He is the blessed one, the successful person par excellence. Let's look at the introduction. 

These beatitudes take place on the mountain. Christian devotion identified this place with the hill above Capernaum. The Sisters who guard this sacred place have transformed it into an oasis of peace, welcome, reflection, and prayer. It is a powerful experience to stay there, especially at sunset, when the sun goes down, to contemplate that lake; one can imagine the apostles' boat that, together with Jesus, goes through those waters. Or, contemplating the shores of that lake, one can imagine Jesus and the apostles walking along the shore. These are the episodes narrated in the gospels. 

Although it is very suggestive this experience, the mountain of which Matthew speaks is not a topographical but a theological place. In all the religions of antiquity, the mountain was imagined as the seat of divinity. Also, in the Bible, it appears as the place where it is possible to meet God, listen to his word, and be introduced to his way of thinking, reacting, and feeling. And we must interpret it in this sense in today's gospel text. 

To go up to the mountain with Jesus means to leave the plain where people live, move, and reason; they have their criteria for judgment and their way of living. They have their beatitudes, their way of considering a person as successful. But, when you go up the mountain, things change. You think differently because you're introduced into God's way of thinking. We can visualize the scene of Jesus leaving the plain; it is like saying that he withdraws from the place where the people that we might call 'normal' live, those who are ruled according to the wisdom of this world. 

And we could describe this wisdom, this world: What do people say? Happy, blessed, is the one who is well and has good health. What counts is health, success, and happiness; of course, the one who has a good bank account happy is the one who can travel, have fun, and does not deprive himself of any pleasure; we have even heard people say, 'I am interested only in one thing - sex, pleasure.' 'I don't think about sacrificing myself for others; I don't want to make any renunciation... I want to enjoy life.' 

I think that a lot of people who are on the plain think this way. It is not excluded that those who have come out of the plain and went up to the mountain, those who heard the word presented by another man, then returned to thinking and reasoning as they did before they went up into the mountain. I will now distinguish two ways of thinking: worldliness (let's call it that) and Godly thinking as Jesus of Nazareth. I repeat that it is not certain that those who went up to the mountain and who declared themselves disciples of Christ do not continue to live according to the criteria of worldliness. After this introduction, let us begin to examine the proposal of man that Jesus makes to us, the successful person. 

The first one: "Blessed are the poor in spirit," We all know the poor. Just look at the poor, the beggars, the hungry, and the homeless. Does Jesus proclaim these people blessed? The answer that immediately comes to us is undoubtedly no, but when we hear the term poor, it means only one thing: the one who has nothing. 

What does Jesus mean? We must understand it well since it is a question of centering our life on a particular proposal of man; we want to understand the proposal that Jesus makes to us well to avoid misinterpreting it. What does it mean to be a successful man when you have nothing and are poor? An important clarification: Jesus is not talking about the poor who have been reduced to misery because of misfortune or an earthquake; they have lost all their possessions. These are not the blessed. Blessed are the poor in spirit. 

Some have trivialized this expression 'in spirit,’ saying that it was enough to have a detached heart from possessions, and thus, one could have an infinity of treasures in this world without binding the heart; moreover, by doing much almsgiving, he was poor in spirit. Almsgiving is a momentary setback; it is not the kingdom of God made up of affluent, mighty people who drop a few alms to the poor and wretched. 

A spirituality in the Church presented poverty in spirit in this way. Almsgiving can also serve to disguise theft and does not introduce into the world the new righteousness; it does not correspond to God's plan about the destiny of the goods of this world because it assumes and considers legitimate that on earth, there may exist both rich and unfortunate, to whom it is enough to give alms. This is not the kingdom of God. 

This is not God's plan for the world. Jesus does not exalt poverty as such but adds 'in spirit.' We know well who the Spirit is and what the Spirit is: this divine power, this divine life, has been given to the sons and daughters of God; it is this power that has been given to us. Where does the divine DNA lead us? It leads us to be poor. 

It's an entirely different perspective from that of the people of the plains, where they consider themselves owners of the goods they have at their disposal; they use all possessive adjectives: my life, possessions, titles, intelligence, and abilities. This way of speaking does not conform to God's plan. All possessive adjectives are a lie, for, as Psalm 24 says: "The earth is the Lord's and all it contains, the universe and its inhabitants." The man owns nothing; everything belongs to God. 

So, one wonders: What is their destiny if the person owns nothing, those immense goods that he has at his disposal and that belong to God? From the perspective of the mount, the view that Jesus presents to us is that the person is a steward of goods that are not his own, and he will one day be called to account for this stewardship. What have you done with your intelligence, with your abilities? 

The relation to the goods of this world is decisive in the building of an authentic society according to God's plan because there is an evil instinct inside of us, which is to take possession of these goods to accumulate them and use them for what we like; and from this evil impulse are born all evils, wars, violence, divisions, and jealousies. Even within families, how many divisions and how many problems arise. If we check the reason, it always depends on the mismanagement of this world's goods. 

The kingdom of God is different. The pagans consider themselves owners of things; they acquire, buy, and exchange them in buying and selling, and they benefit from the exchange. The more they increase their needs and the search for goods they have at their disposal, the more they can increase the price. This is the pagan reasoning which we consider legal and logical, but it does not correspond with God's thinking. And until we don't enter into God's thought, there will always be wars; there will always be violence; there will always be strife; there will never be a society in which there is true peace. 

What is God's design for this world's goods, and how will they be administered? Eliminating all possessive adjectives. One realizes that he has goods at his disposal, observes the needs of his brethren, and gives them away; he does not give gifts, gifts that are not his own; he gives them to the needy. We are rich in gifts, but we are also needy; we are not self-sufficient in our lives because God has made us well. If we were self-sufficient, there would be no love; we would be sufficient unto ourselves. Instead, since we are not self-sufficient, we need others, but we also have gifts to give; love is born there, the manifestation of divine life that each of us possesses. 

Divine life is love, and when we put this gift into action for our brethren, we create love, and love abides because love is Divine. This is the new world that Jesus presents to us on the mountain. ‘Blessed are the poor' does not mean blessed are the wretched. 

The purpose of this beatitude is not that one becomes poor, but precisely the opposite, that there should be an earthly paradise in which no one is poor, and since God has done well and has filled us with gifts, if we manage them according to his plan, that is, as a loving surrender to the brethren of all that we have, this will be paradise on earth. The miracle of the satiation of all forms of hunger is realized. When we have faith in Jesus's proposal, the miracle happens. Who is the blessed one? He is a successful person; he is the one who is left with nothing because all that he has he gave out of love. This is the poor person who is blessed. 

Second beatitude: the afflicted. They have been misunderstood many times. Perhaps we have heard certain expressions when trying to comfort a sick person by telling them to offer suffering to the Lord. Let us stop using this expression, which also makes the sufferer blaspheme. God does not need our sufferings; he does not want them and does not bear our sorrows. God does not want them. 

What does it mean then, 'Blessed are the afflicted'? Luke says: 'Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.' What is the weeping about? It is not difficult to interpret οἱ πεινῶντες 'oy peinontes' in Greek, which is the term used in the original text; it indicates extreme sorrow, a longing, a bitterness of heart like that of one who weeps because he has lost a loved one. Some translate it: 'Blessed is the one who is brokenhearted.’ 

We have the example of Jesus of Nazareth; we understand immediately what Jesus’s weeping consists of. Jesus weeps twice: he cries at the tomb of Lazarus; this is a human feeling that we all understand; it makes us feel that Jesus is close at this moment of the loss of a loved one. The other cry of Jesus is on the Mount of Olives, contemplating the city of Jerusalem, Jesus breaks into tears. Why? He weeps because he realizes that this city makes a choice that will lead to ruin, and he loves that city and those people. He proposed salvation and peace to these people, and the choices that these people made were different. And Jesus burst into tears because he passionately loved the new world; he wanted to bring Israel into this new world, but Israel rejected him and decreed its ruin. 

This is the cry of the blessed. Therefore, the blessed one is the one who feels a very deep passion of love for the new world, even to the point of weeping when they realize that the choices are made in the opposite direction. Let's try to ask ourselves if we love the new world so much to the point of bursting into tears when we realize that the world is making unhealthy choices: wars, violence, and injustice. 

But the promise is beautiful: Jesus says those who cry for love will be consoled. It is a divine passive. 'Divine passive' means that God is not named; the passive is used not to call the name of the Lord. And it is said that 'they shall be comforted,' i.e., God will comfort them; he will comfort them means not to be discouraged because one day, this world that you desire with so much love, with so much passion, this world will be realized; this new society will flourish because God is on the side of those who feel this love. 

'The meek' (the 'dispossessed' in our translation). This is also an adjective that can be misinterpreted. The meek, perhaps, is for us, the quiet people who do not react to provocations; they passively accept, without complaining, even about injustice. The person who shuns all forms of conflict is the one who is proclaimed blessed. These 'meek' ones also seem to have a rather weak personality. 

Let us try to understand well. 'Meek' is mentioned after the previous beatitude. Why? For he who weeps, because he passionately loves the new world and realizes that he cannot introduce it because the opposition is strong, the wickedness is great. The lie triumphs; he can become frustrated and react with the same methods as those who want to perpetuate the old world. 

And here, Jesus introduces a new beatitude: "Blessed are the meek." Meek is not the one who accepts everything passively. Jesus presents himself as meek and humble of heart; 'meek' does not mean he did not struggle for the new world. Jesus faced challenging conflicts, both from a religious point of view and from the condemnation of a system of domination over a people. Suffice it to recall what he says about Herod Antipas. Jesus presents himself as meek. 

Meek is the one who, in the face of wickedness, lies, and hypocrisy, is tempted to respond in the same way but does not do so. He is the one who never yields to the temptation to react with violence to injustice. This attitude of the meek person is precisely the fruit of the impulse of the Spirit. The Christian, the disciple, is the one who loves and can do nothing but love and, therefore, even in a situation in which he must defend his position, he never tries to silence the one who thinks differently because if he gets to cover his mouth, he does not see him anymore, he has won, but he has not convinced him; he has not transformed his brother's heart. 

And the disciple of Christ must never try to win by closing the mouth of the one who opposes him because he would not see him anymore. He must try to change his heart because he loves him and only wants him to be happy. And, in fact, in the Letter to the Galatians, among the signs of the Spirit's presence, besides love and joy, is meekness. Whoever is not meek, always seeking only the good of his brother's joy, the one who is not meek means who does not respond to the impulse of the Spirit. 

Also, in the first letter of Peter, which is written precisely for the persecuted, Peter says, 'Always know how to give reasons for your choices but with meekness and respect.' This we must always keep in mind. Never try to impose, never raise your voice, and never offend because the disciple of Christ defends his own choice of life, but always with meekness and respect. 

The promise made to these blessed ones is the earth. The 'earth,' not the material earth, but the new world, Christ promises because God is on the side of these meek, and the new earth is built with meekness. 

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled." We all know hunger and thirst. The people of Israel especially felt thirst because it is a land poor in water; also, Israel had the whole experience of the wilderness and, therefore, the experience of thirst, the most pressing need we experience. Jesus says that the blessed one is the one who longs for righteousness, as the thirsty one longs for water. 

What is righteousness all about? When we hear of righteousness and justice, we understand that the wicked, who have committed some crime, have been severely punished. And we were satisfied because somebody was executed, justice was done, and a judge put things in their place. So, by comparison, it applies to God because, sometimes, when you see a wicked person who has committed some grave crime and that, maybe, is not punished in this world, then we say, 'One day, God will make him pay.' This is justice. 

Then, we ask ourselves if the blessed one is the one who longs for this justice, that is, to see that injustice is to be punished with those who have committed crimes, or for the injustice they have done, even as well that some go to hell because the offense is very great... Would this be the blessed person? And immediately, we all say, No. This person cannot be blessed. 

Let's try to understand what righteousness is, the new righteousness of God. This term can be very much misunderstood, and it is perilous when we apply our righteousness to God. God is not just in this way. I have taken the trouble to review all the passages, all the texts where this term righteousness occurs: צדק 'tze dek' in Hebrew, where righteousness is applied to God. All these texts must be interpreted, and they are very clear that God's Righteousness is always and only meant his benevolence, his love. And, therefore, to hunger and thirst for righteousness means to want that in this world, God's justice finally reigns, that is to say, the new world that he wants, a world of Shalom, peace, and whole life. And this new world, this new righteousness, must be coveted like water by a thirsty man. He who feels this need for new righteousness, world, and society is blessed. 

What is the objection we feel to this beatitude? It is a lack of hope, 'I will always remain thirsty; I will be one of those who must quench my hunger, my thirst, with other satisfactions because I will never succeed in building this new world.' This is Jesus' promise to us: 'Do not become anorexic because you will be satisfied, so feed this hunger, this thirst, because you have God on your side, and this need of yours will one day be satisfied, and you will leave a mark in the history of the world because you have committed yourself to this righteousness which is God's righteousness.' 

Then, 'merciful' - what do we mean by merciful? We mean the one who is always trying to make compassion and forgiveness and holds nothing back; he is merciful. This is a straightforward interpretation, very straightforward and also true, but “blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy,” understood in this sense can be interpreted in this way: 'If someone does something wrong to me, I forgive him for then, one day, I will also obtain mercy. That is, God will pretend that nothing has happened, turn a blind eye, and take me to paradise, although I have also done some bad things.' That is not the purpose of the beatitude 'Blessed are the merciful.’ 

The first thing I must try to understand is that if I must be merciful, it is because I am a son or daughter of God; son means that I resemble a father, and the father I want to resemble is the heavenly Father. If he asks me to be merciful, I should look to him and see how he is merciful. So, I go to the Old Testament and see the first presentation that he makes of himself, and he presents himself precisely as merciful. 'Ani el rachun' - רַחוּם֙ (rachun) in Hebrew. 'Rajun' means: 'I am the one who loves people with visceral love.’ 'Rechem’ is the womb, the maternal womb. The first image of God is maternal; that is, God says of himself: 'I love people with a visceral love, like a mother who loves the child in her womb.' 

A mother loves, which is enough; she has only one need: seeing her child happy. And if the child makes wrong decisions and does not reach the goal of happiness, she tries to lead him on the path of joy. She does not add more evil to the evil that the son has done to himself. God is merciful because he loves with a visceral, unconditional love. 'Hanun' indicates precisely a love that never fails and is not conditional on the response of the other. God loves in this way; he does not love only the good; he loves everyone and makes them good with his love. It is not that they must first be good to be loved; it is that God simply loves. And when people receive this love, that is mercy. 

It's not compassion that leads God not to punish the one who has done evil and, therefore, is merciful, No. Let's erase this because God comes out badly from these images of a merciful God; on the other hand, it is not possible that there is a just God who is also merciful. Either one or the other must be blotted out because if he is just, he must punish those who have done evil, but God is not just in this sense. God is merciful, not just. He is just, yes, but not according to our way. He is just because, with his love, he makes righteous; that is, he tries to put people in a way where they can fully realize their life, which is a life of love. 

This is the merciful one, the one who unconditionally wants the good of man. He sees the need; he allows himself to be moved in his heart and acts. The merciful are those who resemble this heavenly Father; that is to say, when faced with the need of their brother, they feel their guts move, just like the Samaritan who, upon seeing that man who had encountered robbers (the verb used is precisely σπλαγχνίζομαι - 'splagchnizomai'), felt his viscera move and is guided by this passion of love. 

This is the merciful one: the one who, like God, feels his brother's need as his own and acts. These are the merciful. 'They will obtain mercy' does not mean that one day God will give them some rebate in the punishments they deserve. It means that they are in tune with the Merciful One, God. 'They will obtain mercy' means obtaining the likeness of the heavenly Father, the Merciful One. 

They are blessed because they are children of the Merciful One. They have received his sensitivity to the needs of the poor and the suffering, and they are moved by his Spirit, by his love. They behave like him; they behave as merciful. God says, ' Congratulations, you are in tune with me when this passion of love for humankind moves you.' 

"The pure in heart, for they shall see God." We know that in the Bible, the heart is not the seat of feeling but the seat of decisions, the seat of intelligence. The Semites think with the heart; they decide with the heart. The book of the Sirach says that God has given people a heart to think, to decide. Jesus also uses the same language; in front of the scribes who were scandalized because he forgives the sinners and the paralytic, what does Jesus say? "Why do you think thus in your hearts?" We would have said: What's going on in your head? Jesus says: What's going on in your heart? 

"Clean of heart." Therefore, clean of heart means the choice made; these choices that start from the heart must start from a pure heart. To understand this, we can employ a biblical image that appears no less than 27 times in the Bible זהב טָהוֹר - zahav tahor - pure gold, meaning not mixed with other metal; today we would say 24-karat gold; the same gold used not for jewelry but for bullion. Pure inside, there is nothing else. 'Pure heart' means a heart, a decision center, which is guided by the love of God, not mixed with other idols that make you make decisions that do not conform to God's thinking. 

We have the image of a pure heart in the life of couples; in a couple, love must be pure, that is, only for the beloved person; there must not be other lovers because otherwise, the heart's decisions are contaminated. So, the pure-hearted person is the one who does not compromise with his conscience, and when you have this heart, you see God. To see God means to experience God; if you don't have this purity of heart if you go to church but then you compromise your conscience by following other idols, other passions, maybe moral corruption, perhaps they cannot see God, that is, to see the invisible. 

To grasp the invisible, to have another vision besides the material, concrete look, the one we all have, purity of heart is required. Some say that we Christians are blind. But we are not blind; we see what everybody else sees and more. So, the look of the people with a pure heart can see beyond what is verifiable, what is visible, and what is seen. It is seen, for example, in the one who lays down his life for love to his brother or sister, the one who in society is not a successful person because he does not seek success by crushing others, even by lies, but only thinking of making the other happy. 

He is a successful person, but to see him as a successful person, one must be able to see the invisible and the true Lord in whom he becomes a servant. In the servant, one sees the humiliated; instead, the one who sees the invisible sees the successful person, the one whom God proclaims blessed. To see this, one must have a pure heart. The same is true in front of death, in front of a coffin: The material look sees the conclusion of life; the one with a pure heart sees the invisible; he sees where this person who has left us goes; he has entered the world of God. But, to have this look, it is necessary to have a pure and detached heart from idols, guided only by God. 

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God." The Latin translation reads 'blessed are the pacific,' those who do not harm anyone, avoid conflicts, and live in harmony with all... okay, but here 'peaceful ones' are 'εἰρηνοποιοί,' eirenopoioi in Greek; there are two words together” 'eirene' and then 'poiein' is the verb to make = to make peace, to build peace. The Roman emperors, for example, Caesar, Commodus, and Augustus, especially, proclaimed themselves 'εἰρηνοποιοί,' eirenopoioi, the peacemakers. Augustus is the most famous and has achieved peace in the world with his legions, with much violence and many crimes, and he called himself 'εἰρηνοποιοί,’ eirenopoioi, the peacemaker. 

It is precisely this term that Jesus uses: blessed are the peacemakers. There is an expression in Hebrew that was used at the time of Jesus: מלאכה שָׁלוֹם - 'laahashote shalom' - peacebuilder; where there was discord, the one who could build peace was called blessed. Indeed, this is one aspect of Jesus' beatitude. Blessed are those who, by all means, strive to develop love and reconciliation and end conflicts and wars. If there are families who disagree, whoever succeeds in bringing peace is indeed blessed according to the beatitudes of Jesus. 

But this beatitude has a deeper content because 'shalom,' in Hebrew, indicates the fullness of all good, the joy-filled life; and he who strives that all may be filled with joy and life is a maker of 'shalom,’ a builder of peace. This is the deeper meaning of the beatitude. Whoever strives to make someone happy is blessed. I want to recall the promise, which is the one that pleases me the most. It touches me when I read it because it says they will be called 'sons and daughters of God.’ This, too, is a divine passive. It means that God calls these people 'my sons and daughters.’ 

I think we've all had the sweet experience of hearing our father, who one day, looking us in the eyes, has said, 'You are my son,' maybe because daddy was a good person, attentive to the needs of others, available, and when he sees that his son has the same feelings, the same way of behaving, and he is pleased. He looks him in the eyes and says: 'You are my son, my daughter.’ This is the promise of the beatitude of the peacemakers. God looks them in the eye and says, ' Truly you are my children.’ To the one who builds love, life, and joy, God looks at him with satisfaction and says: 'You are my son, my daughter.' 

The persecuted for justice: Whoever accepts the proposal of the new world made by Jesus will know no applause from those who want to perpetuate the old world. When Jesus came to this world, King Herod, representative of the old world, did everything possible to get him out of the way. He realized that he was introducing a new, alternative society to that of the rulers of this world. 

The old world does not resign itself to disappear peacefully, and those who carry forward the new world must expect the same thing that happened to Jesus: 'If they persecuted me, they would persecute you also,' Jesus said. 'If they were of the world, reasoned according to people’s judgment, the world would love them because they would love what is theirs; but because they are not of the world, the world hates them.’ 

This is what the Christian must expect; you must not marvel that the world does not welcome or recognize you. The Christian should fear if the world applauds you. By 'world,' I mean worldliness, the way of reasoning opposed to God's plan. If it applauds you, it means you still reason in the way of the old world. Even though they are persecuted, the kingdom of God is promised to these people. The important thing is that while the other promises were for the future, this one is in the present: "The kingdom of heaven is theirs," i.e., look at persecution as a sign that you do not belong to worldliness, that you belong to that new world that God will surely bring about. 

I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.