by Fr. Rich Andre, C.S.P.
February 3, 2026

Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A) on February 1, 2026, at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Chicago, IL. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13; Psalm 146; 1 Corinthians 1:26-31; and Matthew 5:1-12a.

Matthew is the most influential gospel. Matthew systematically presents Jesus’ teachings in 5 major discourses, echoing the 5 books of the Jewish Law.

In Matthew, Jesus focuses on what God’s reign will look like when it fully breaks forth, calling it “the kingdom of heaven.” The challenge issued by Jesus in Matthew is how we are called to help usher in that kingdom right here, right now. 

Today’s passage is the beginning of the first of the 5 discourses. This passage is the blueprint, the summary, the synthesis of everything that Jesus will do throughout the rest of his life, including how he teaches, how he treats the outcasts of society, how he dies on the cross… all to bring about the kingdom.

Jesus calls all of us to do the same. These Beatitudes — proclaimed on a mountaintop, just as Moses received the Law from God on Mount Sinai — are beloved by many people, but they are challenging! 

For the times when we have failed to be meek, to be merciful, or to be clean hearted, when we have failed to work for peace, when we have failed to desire righteousness for those who have been beaten down by society, we ask for God’s forgiveness.

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In his last book of essays, the author Kurt Vonnegut lamented how some Christians have fought long and hard for the Ten Commandments to be posted in government buildings. Because, when you come right down to it, the Ten Commandments are a strange choice of teachings for Christians to emphasize above all others — they are harsh statements about what we should not do. Surprisingly few Christians have advocated for posting the Beatitudes in our government buildings. The Beatitudes speak of values more central to the kingdom of heaven, even if they are more challenging to live out than the Ten Commandments. Vonnegut imagined a world where we posted “Blessed are the merciful” in our courtrooms and “Blessed are the peacemakers” at the Pentagon.

Matthew sets up his gospel as a conflict between the coming kingdom of heaven, and “the kingdom of Satan,” led by Herod who tried to kill Jesus as an infant and the scribes and Pharisees who plotted to kill Jesus as an adult. 

We believe that Matthew’s original audience were the Jewish Christians who lived in Antioch about half a century after Christ’s resurrection. These believers felt rejected by the growing Greek Christian majority because they were Jewish, and they felt rejected by their fellow Jews because they were Christian. Maybe it was easier for them to look forward to the promises of the kingdom of heaven than it is for us to reject the comforts we can receive in the kingdom of Satan. When you feel like an outsider, it’s a lot easier to long for radical changes in social systems.

The last time I heard this passage proclaimed at Sunday Mass, I was among a parish of Catholics who felt like outsiders. It was January 29, 2023, and I was halfway through my 4^th pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Our Lady of Fatima is the largest Catholic parish in the entire Holy Land. Christians are now only 1.5% of the population there, and almost all of them are Palestinians who do not have Israeli citizenship. Whenever I lead a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, my fellow pilgrims and I join this West Bank community for Sunday Mass. After Mass, we present them with over-the-counter drugs and vitamins for their medical clinic, and then we spend an hour socializing with the people to better understand their experiences as the people who worship only a stone’s throw away from where tradition says the angels first appeared to the shepherds to proclaim Jesus’ birth. Although the pastor preached in Arabic and I only understood one word of his homily, I was able to get the general gist of his message. The word was “Jenin.”¹ Three days before the Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Fatima, “the Israeli Border Police and the Israeli army had conducted an armed raid on the Jenin refugee camp” in the West Bank. 10 Palestinians eventually died in the resulting violence, including some whom the Israeli army claimed were terrorists planning an attack, but among the dead was also an elderly woman, one of 30 Palestinians who had been killed by the Israeli government in the first 29 days of 2023.

It didn’t take a theologian to figure out what the pastor’s homily was about. In a cycle of violence in the Middle East that goes back generations, in which each side can claim their ethnic group has the right to the land in dispute, how does one live out the Beatitudes? How can people on either side of the conflict remain meek peacemakers when they fear that the people on the other side will not respect the rule of law? We know what happened less than nine months later, when some Palestinians chose to take the violence to a heinously higher level and the Israeli government responded with all-out war.

In our own country, as we look at rapid, reckless policy changes being made by both conservatives and liberals, it seems as if our only values are power grabs, ideology, and cruelty. We ask: how can we afford to be meek, humble, and merciful when the other side will attack our vulnerabilities? How can we promote peace when our enemies are agitating for war? Can we hunger and thirst for righteousness in ways that uphold the commandments not to covet, not to lie, and not to kill?

As Matthew’s Jesus makes clear on the upcoming Sundays in July and August, it is not the place of believers to decide who belongs to which kingdom. It is up to God, not us, to sort the wheat from the chaff and the good fish from the bad fish. Matthew repeatedly includes exhortations to reconcile and admonitions not to judge. That is our call. We are to continue being meek, merciful, and clean of heart, no matter what, just as Jesus did all the way to his cross and even after his resurrection.

Even now, the kingdom of heaven is not fully realized. But as scripture scholar Arland J. Hultgren wrote, “As the dawn precedes the rising of the sun… its effects can be seen as lighting up the present.” While we await the kingdom of heaven, we must endeavor to treat every person with the love, humility, mercy, and forgiveness of Jesus, making disciples of all nations.