A homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 1, 2026
Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13, 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, Matthew 5:1-12a
Sometimes, a passage from Scripture is so clear, so powerful, so iconic that we might be tempted to smile and say, “Yes, I know that one. It’s so, so inspiring; I love it. I refer to it all the time.”
And whatever we’ve ever thought about those words from Jesus or a letter-writing Apostle or an Old Testament prophet pretty much sticks with us the way we interpreted them the first time.
And maybe that’s OK. We cling to words of comfort and hope; we stay energized by grace whenever God calls us to action.
Yet some passages are so profound that they deserve — they demand! — revisiting. They order us to deepen our understanding of them, commanding us to add to our interpretation more than reinterpreting them.
The passage we know as The Beatitudes, Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount as recorded by Matthew, demands that we break it open again and again.
Because, in our very human and 21st-century way, we quite often interpret The Beatitudes as a transactional contract.
Make peace, have Sunday dinner with God.
Don’t make waves, inherit 40 acres and a mule.
Be forgiving and, whew, be forgiven.
And many translations of Matthew’s fifth chapter such as ours today do give us an if-then recitation. If we do X, we will be blessed with Y.
A simple call to action. Risk and reward. A day’s pay for a day’s labor.
But what if the blessing came first? What if we’re already blessed?
Because we are.
From the moment our immortal souls enter our human flesh, we children of God are blessed with an abundance of grace and extraordinary and extraordinarily unique gifts and talents and intellects. And we can’t discount free will.
Then again, it is nonetheless true that from the moment our immortal souls enter our human flesh, we children of God are challenged to use those gifts to live full lives and uplift our billions of sisters and brothers in our own ways.
As peacemakers, mourners, mediators, conciliators, caregivers, evangelizers, and so many varied roles.
Our blessings make us who we are. Who we are leads us to our doing whatever it is we do well, through God’s grace.
And so, the challenge to act comes after receiving the gift, just as learning to ride comes after receiving the bicycle.
So: Is the Sermon on the Mount fundamentally a call to action or not? To specific actions in particular situations? Or a more broad-brush way to live in the Light of Christ?
If we are in touch with our authentic selves, we know who we are. We don’t need a carrot or a stick to do what we do in our everyday lives (though it’s best not to act like the people in the Progressive Insurance “Becoming Their Parents” ads).
The key phrase, then, is “everyday lives.”
When we know ourselves, we are in touch with our blessings, and they empower us.
What we do because of the blessings that make us who we are should be as everyday as breathing: automatic, but not robotic. Frequent.
If our lives have been blessed with the gift of empathy, then it’s perfectly natural and literally expected for us to be the shoulders others choose to cry on.
If our lives have been blessed with the gift of eager participation and team spirit, then it’s a given that we will help out whenever there’s a need, backaches notwithstanding.
If our lives have been blessed with the gift of seeing the 30,000-foot view, then we will be the ones to provide the perspective and distance other folks may need to solve a quarrel.
When we are blessed, the odds are we are good.
When we are blessed, the good we do is its own reward.
Somebody may forget to thank us sometimes. Somebody may forget our birthdays or anniversaries, even though we’ve never forgotten theirs. And if the huge crowd at Table 7 scoots out the door without leaving a tip … it’s on them, not us.
Yes, our loving Triune God has promised us great rewards in Heaven, and we can sleep well in that faith and hope. God always delivers on divine promises.
But right now, we can smile and be warmed in this bitter chill, knowing how blessed we already are, and being confident that when we are blessed, the good we do is its own reward.
We can rejoice and be glad. I heard that from the most reliable source ever.
