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.