OMELIE / Omelie EN

01 feb 2026

01/02/2026 - 4th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - Year A

01/02/2026 - 4th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - Year A

1st reading Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13 from Psalm 145 2nd reading 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 Gospel Matthew 5:1-12

The prophet Zephaniah addresses the poor to share his reflections and exhortations. Was it already useless in his times to address the rich or the powerful? God's words reach the poor, are heard by the poor, and are lived by the poor with obedience and joy, and above all, with fruitfulness. Even when Jesus came into the world, the angels called the shepherds, men with precarious jobs, lives and homes, not the citizens who felt secure in their homes and jobs. It is God's way to begin his works among us with hidden people, as he began with Mary, hidden in Nazareth. And so, even in recent centuries, divine manifestations have been directed at poor peasant girls or ignorant boys, or young people without degrees, or even declared enemies of the Church.

What does Zephaniah recommend? “Seek the Lord, all you humble of the earth;

seek justice, seek humility”. The poor are not told to seek wealth, security, let alone arrogance. They will seek the Lord, justice, humility: the Lord is just and humble, those who seek humility find the Lord, and those who seek justice find themselves immersed in his heart.

This short passage is a beautiful prelude to the Gospel passage: a crowd, led by Jesus' disciples, climbs the mountain. Why? They are looking for him, and they are struggling to find him. They leave their comforts, they leave their daily affairs, they go to a secluded place where their listening will not be disturbed, where their search will not be distracted by other things.

And what does Jesus do? He begins to speak, opens his mouth, and lets the words come out one by one. They are all precious, because they are words that come from his eternity, from the silence of thirty years in Nazareth, from the vision of a future rich in communion, peace, and fulfilled hopes.

The words spoken by Jesus are now in our memory. They are already part of our way of thinking and desiring. Yet they are new. When we have heard them before, we now realise that we were distracted. We heard them thinking that they could not and should not change our habits. We have left a glass wall between ourselves and Jesus that gives us the illusion of understanding, of knowing, of already being as the Lord would have us be.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”: who are the poor? Are they only the poor, or beggars? Blessed are the beggars of the Spirit: poverty, as it is normally understood, remains in the background. Blessed, that is, a friend of God and his ally, is the one who desires his Spirit, his life of love. In this way, they partake in the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom where Jesus is the beloved and loving king!

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Who are those who mourn? Those who share Jesus' mourning over the Holy City, his mourning at the tomb of Lazarus, his mourning for the women of Jerusalem and their children. Blessed are those who weep for the rejection of Jesus, for the lack of faith in him, for those who suffer for him: these tears are met with the consolation of the Father.

“Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.” You are in the Father's heart when the name of Jesus is so present in you that it attracts the hatred of those who hate him. You will not be afraid, but you will offer up your suffering, your concern and the shame of calumny, knowing that Jesus has already endured all this.

We could continue with other phrases of Jesus’, but let us see how Saint Paul heard these words in the community of Corinth, a community of poor people, without the presence of nobles and powerful people. If all or most believers are judged foolish by others, they should not be ashamed: they are loved by God and therefore protected and sanctified by him. We may be poor and despised, but we find glory in this, because Jesus is present among us, who “became for us wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption”. We boast of him, and we seek nothing else. The world will realise that true wisdom is that which is imbued with love, that true justice is that which saves men from the injustice of the evil one, and that the redeemed and sanctified world becomes the kingdom of heaven. In it, all find life, joy and freedom. We will be the ones to start, the poor of the earth, as Zephaniah invited us to do. Let us begin to change the world, now that Jesus is among us!