St. Dominic, Fra Angelico
This Sunday we read the Beatitudes. To make brief comments is hopeless. We need to memorize them, ponder them one at a time – perhaps one each day. We need to spend time thinking about their path of upward ascent, taken all together. We need to read books about them, ponder them, make them our rule of life.
Here I will only try to put them in context.
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We have come to the fourth week in Ordinary Time, in the Lectionary year of St. Matthew. The Beatitudes are Matthew 5:1-12, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount and the beginning of the preaching of Jesus.
Consider how few words he has spoken up till now. Chapters one to two were the infancy. Luke gives the child Jesus a few words, when he is found in the temple, but in Matthew it is all the actions of Joseph.
Chapter three is John the Baptist. Jesus only says John should baptize him, “to fulfill all righteousness.” Righteousness.
Chapter four is the Temptation followed by the call of the first disciples (our reading last week). Jesus has three words at the Temptation: “not by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God”; “do not test the Lord”; “you shall worship the Lord alone, him only shall you serve.” Again, righteousness, with a deeper sense of following.
In the rest of chapter four, his only words are to Peter and Andrew: “come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Our path of righteousness is moving deeper into radical union with Christ.
After the calling of Peter and Andrew, James and John, we read that he went around Galilee preaching and healing. The Lectionary skips the last two verses of the chapter, which say his fame spread, and great multitudes came to follow him, from all over.
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Sermon on the Mount, Fra Angelico
And so we come to the Beatitudes. Jesus goes up the mountain, and his disciples come to him. Disciple only means “learner.” All those multitudes “followed him” with the same verb by which Jesus commanded Peter and Andrew, “follow me,” “and they followed him.” He is not stepping away from the crowds. He is going up where he can teach to them.
My point in reviewing all this background is to underline how central to Jesus’s mission are the Beatitudes, and the Sermon on the Mount, which they begin. He has said nothing but “follow me.” Now, at last, he opens his mouth and teaches. (Matthew’s Gospel is the Gospel of Jesus’s teaching, organized in five great sermons.)
And Jesus says – his very first real teaching, about the righteousness and following and word of God that he had proclaimed – “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Not a side point. The heart of the Gospel.
Poor, men of sorrows, meek, hungering for justice, merciful, pure of heart, peacemakers, and persecuted. He describes himself, and he calls us to come follow him.
Living for the kingdom of heaven and the consolation of the Spirit and the inheritance, and justice and mercy, and the vision of God and sonship.
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Our first reading, from the prophet Zephaniah, tells those “who have observed the law,” “seek the Lord.” He speaks of a transition, a deepening. We must observe the Law, but we must go deeper: “Lord, I have done all this,” says the rich young man in Luke’s Gospel, “what more?” “Come, follow me.” We must live for nothing but Jesus. We must put on Jesus, poor, man of sorrows, meek, hungering for justice, merciful, pure of heart, peacemaker, and persecuted.
We must become “a people humble and lowly.” 
And we must “take refuge in the name of the Lord”: “the name of the Lord” is an Old Testament expression for God’s self-revelation. We want nothing but to know Christ, and him crucified, and to put on his image, in the Beatitudes. Sacred heart of Jesus, make our hearts like unto thine! That’s the Gospel.
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Our next reading from First Corinthians further emphasizes the “humble and lowly”. God chose us – and Paul’s point is that he chose us not for our greatness but for his, not because we are powerful and wise and awesome but because he is. He chose us not so we can boast, but to destroy our boasting.
And he made Jesus our wisdom from God, our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption, and
The Stigmata of St. Francis
our only boast.
Humility means knowing that it is only in Jesus that we find greatness. Humility means knowing that the way of Jesus, the self-portrait he paints in the Beatitudes, is a way of humility. And humility means knowing that the Beatitudes are not only a way we would never guess unless he revealed it to us, but also a way we could never live unless he gives us his heart.
How are the Beatitudes calling you to deeper humility?
