Sunday Homily, 1 February 2026 - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

Why would the Lord deliver his first sermon on a mountain of all places?  Doesn't that affect who can get near him?  Also, it's not particularly comfortable for the congregants.  If they sit straight forward facing the Lord, they’ll roll backwards! So, they have to sit sideways for 15 to 20 minutes while the Lord delivered his sermon.  Is a mountain, then, a poor choice of stage for teaching?  The mountain is significant for two reasons: one to do with the Old Testament, and another to do with the New Testament.

Jesus sitting atop the mount and teaching is reminiscent of Moses.  He went up Mount Sinai and gave God’s law to the people.  Jesus goes up a different mountain, and as the new Moses gives God’s new law to the people.  So, Jesus on the mount evokes the biblical notion of divine presence and God's majesty, sure, but precisely to his people.  Old Moses and the New Moses are witnesses to God's sight of every man and woman.  So much for the Old Testament reason for a sermon on a mount.

But Jesus ascends the mountain also to symbolise the change we must make in our perspective.  Instead of the rat race and maze of life, we too ascend the mountain with Jesus and there receive from him a new way of thinking and feeling about each other.  What he gives us up here is the divine perspective on human experience.  This first point in the Lord sermon, even before he speaks: we need to change our way of thinking.

The disciples might have been inclined to think of misadventure and misery as some kind of punishment or curse.  In our day, we would be more inclined to think of misadventure as the consequences of coincidence.  “These things happen,” we say to each other.  Both views have the same result: the bystander steps back from those who suffer.  Far be it from us, some might say, to interfere with divine justice or intervene on human misfortune.

Jesus’ Beatitudes won't allow us to step back from others when they suffer, because those who suffer are blessed by God.  If we are about becoming holy people, people marked by divine grace, then we must go towards those who are blessed.  To be blessed by God means to be favoured, seen, approved of, even honoured and strengthened by him.  We too want to be blessed, and so we spend our time with the blessed.  Living the Beatitudes ourselves, we are not bystanders in the face of suffering: we approach the blessed with reverence and charity.

And in this we imitate Jesus himself.  He left the glory of his heaven to abide with us and to redeem us.  He might have let our misery in sin continue, but his compassion would not allow it.  Instead, he stepped down on to our world and brought good news to the poor.  And we do the same.

After Christ, we recognise that the poor in spirit are blessed, not cursed.  We know that mourners are favoured by God, not forgotten.  We know that the merciful are seen and noticed, not ignored.  We know that peacemakers are nicknamed angels, that is, “sons of God”: peacemakers are approved of; they’re not meddlers.

We’re going to find we keep returning to the Beatitudes to explain Jesus’ teaching.  Like an overture, all the themes of Matthew's Gospel can be traced back into them.  So, please be encouraged to memorise the Beatitudes; make them part of how you remember the message of Jesus.  Years ago, when I taught Matthew's Gospel to seminarians, the first question on the exam was to complete the text of one of the Beatitudes.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” the question began.  I’m sorry to have to tell you that not all of those future priests got the question right.  But we can.  Do write them out and put them on the fridge.

Unless we are content to ignore those who suffer, we need to change our read on human experience.  Unless we are happy with the world as we know it, we have to go up the mountain with Jesus.  And there we learn from the New Moses how we are to be with each other.  If we find we incur opposition and hostility because we live the Beatitudes, know that the Ninth Beatitude is ours: “Blessed are you.”  For Christ himself, the source of every blessing, was opposed and condemned, and yet lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  To him be the glory for ever.  Amen.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP Parish Priest