The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sunday, February 1, 2026
St. James Cathedral

My friends, the beatitudes that we just heard are some of the most famous verses in all of the New Testament. These verses paint a very different picture of the blessed life – of what brings true happiness - from the “me first” mentality that can often be the dominant narrative in our society.

In today’s Gospel Jesus goes up a mountain and shares his vision of discipleship, his charter for the community of faith, as it were. The Beatitudes are what Pope Francis called the Christian’s calling card (Gaudete et Exsultate, #63)

Jesus’ message was one that echoed what the prophets had taught over the centuries. Prophets like Zephaniah, whom we heard in our first reading. Some six hundred years before Jesus, the prophet urged the people of Judah to be honest and humble and peaceable and to seek right-relationship with God.

Such attitudes and actions reflect the reign of God and are a good measure of a community’s health. In order to find real blessedness, real happiness, the attitudes reflected in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount must be sought.

At the top of the list is to be poor in spirit. Such an attitude can really announce the presence of the Kingdom of God because it acknowledges that true wealth comes from depending on God. To be poor in spirit is to have the attitude of gratitude – to see everything we have as a gift from God.

But while the message is simple, it is a difficult one for us to live out. Down through the centuries followers of Jesus have struggled with the practical implications of being poor in spirit. St. Paul faced the same struggle in the Christian community at Corinth in the middle of the first century.

In Paul’s time Corinth was a cosmopolitan city made of up of Jews and Gentiles, the sophisticated and uneducated, the rich and the poor. There was an intense sense of striving to improve one’s status. That kind of “looking out for number one” is not just a modern notion, it was alive and well in Corinth in the 50s. Such attitudes were also reflected in the Church. There were those who competed, who measured themselves against others in the community to see who was spiritually superior.

We heard some of that competition in last week’s passage. Some were claiming allegiance to one leader or another, and putting forth how their vision of things was far superior to another’s.

Paul tried to bring some perspective to this struggle, and in today’s passage he counsels that the human standards of power, of noble birth, of human wisdom are not the standards of the Kingdom of God. He points out that God chooses those that the world often sees as weak, foolish, lowly and despised. These are the folks Jesus described as the poor in spirit, and they have a great advantage over the powerful and self-sufficient because the poor in spirit know that they can’t do it all on their own.

But this vision is not embraced by all Christians, or even all Catholics. Paul’s struggle with division within the early Church is mirrored in competing visions that we are seeing played out every single day in our country. Those who consider themselves faithful followers of Jesus counsel a “looking out for number one” mentality that results in the discarding of those who are vulnerable and in need.

But Psalm 146, which we sang as our responsorial psalm today, reassures us that “The Lord keeps faith forever, secures justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry…sets captives free…loves the just…and protects strangers.”

As we reflect on our life together as a parish family of St. James, Immaculate Conception and Christ Our Hope, it is clear that those priorities have been our priorities over the course of our histories as individual parishes. What an incredibly powerful witness we are in our community!

In a few weeks we, as a parish family, will begin discussing our vision for our future together. As we consider the question, “Who is God calling us to become?” we will be challenged to lean into these shared values and to move beyond seeing ourselves as just members of one of our three parishes.

Like the Church in Corinth long ago, we we will be called upon to set aside the temptation to competition, to putting “my parish first,” and to have a more expansive view of who God is inviting us to become. In this process we will be called on to be poor in spirit, to rely on God and to let the Holy Spirit lead us.

What is clear as we begin this process of discernment is that the priorities and values of the Beatitudes are front and center in our three parishes. What a marvelous gift that is! As we move into the future together, we are invited to embrace and build on that unity of vision.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus teaches that those who are truly happy, truly blessed, are those who have moved beyond themselves to recognize their need for God and who place others ahead of themselves. And those who do so will dwell in God’s reign, God’s kingdom of heaven.

May the Eucharist we share help us to be poor in spirit, to be weak and lowly and humble enough to depend on God and allow God to work in us and through us. If we can strive for that way of life, of that way of being a parish family, we will truly be blessed, and our lives will be a blessing for others.

Father Gary F. Lazzeroni