Today we honour the saints: the famous ones in stained-glass windows, and the countless unknown ones who loved God quietly, perhaps in our own families. Jesus shows us what they had in common in the Beatitudes.
Father Fernando Armellini SCJ notes that Matthew places this teaching “on the mountain.” In the Bible, the mountain is less a place on the map than “any place or time when we dispose ourselves to meet the Lord and to accept his word.” Jesus leaves the plain, where life is ranked by health, success and a “flush bank account,” and climbs to where God’s very different scale of values is proclaimed.
On the first Beatitude, Armellini is striking: “the poor, according to the Gospel, are not those who have nothing, but those who do not keep anything for themselves.” And its promise is not only for the next life: “From the moment we choose to become and remain poor, we enter the ‘kingdom of heaven’ and belong to the family of saints.”
William Barclay agrees that this blessedness begins now. It is “something into which he has entered” already, a joy “completely untouchable and unassailable,” because it comes from living in the presence of Jesus.
This is the secret of the saints. They were not perfect people who never fell. They were people who kept turning to God with open hands, sharing what they had received. Holiness is not reserved for a few heroes; it is the ordinary vocation of every baptised Christian.
To reflect on: What am I keeping for myself that God is asking me to share?
Prayer: Lord, you call each of us to holiness. Through the prayers of all your saints, give us poor and generous hearts, and the joy that no one can take from us. Amen.
Father Josekutty Mathew CMF
Claretian Publications
bibleclaret.org
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