4th. Sunday (Year A) 2023

 

4^th. Sunday (Year A)

(Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13; 1^st. Corinthians 1:26-31; Matthew 5:1-12)

 

Once again, People of God, we have the Sermon on the Mount for our Gospel reading.  We are given it because it is indeed a compendium of the Good News brought by Christ to bring peace on earth for all those of good will.  Today, however, it is to be approached from the point of view of the accompanying readings from the prophet Zephaniah and St. Paul’s first letter to the Church he founded in Corinth.

Our reading from the prophecy of Zephaniah started with the words:

Seek the LORD, all you humble of the land who have observed His law.  Seek  righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you will be sheltered on the day of the LORD's anger.

‘Righteousness’ is personal to God, and “seek righteousness” means: ‘try to imitate the holiness of God’, it requires that we learn from Him what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is beautiful.  In order to “seek righteousness” we need to be prepared to gradually die to ourselves, our opinions, and to OUR own passions; it also means that we learn to fight against our weaknesses, such despondency, anxiety, and self-solicitude, in order to walk in the ways of Christ by the power of His Spirit; that, we may gradually become ever more truly children of God: true to Him Who is our heavenly Father, our earthly Companion, and ever-faithful Guide and Strength.

How great the gulf is between the translation ‘seek righteousness’ and its modern ‘woke’ versions ‘seek integrity’, ‘seek justice’, becomes clear when we realize  that the greatest sinners are often  those who are most proud of their assumed personal integrity, and of the promotion of their own versions of social justice, such as – in Canada – persuading, encouraging, the infirm needing some care, the disturbingly ill, and, indeed, the elderly generally, to agree to die-to-order!  In our own country, ‘chosen’ or  ‘designated’ words are being declared criminal, while other things such as blatant and provocative sexual display are approved: special groups allowed to be themselves and do what they want to do, while the population in general is not free to speak their normal minds.  Today, dear People of God, we find ourselves in a world where the Devil’s own pseudo-virtue is both gladly embraced and proudly promoted, as Our Blessed Lord insinuated saying (Luke 18:8):

             When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?

That is why the prophet Zephaniah declared in the name of the Lord:

I will remove from your midst the proud braggarts, and you shall no longer exalt yourself on My holy mountain.   I will leave as a remnant in your midst a  people humble and lowly, who shall take refuge in the name of the LORD.   (3:11)

And to confirm his vision of a purified Israel, Zephaniah’s prophecy ends with words evoking for us the thought of Mary:

Shout for joy, daughter of Zion!  Sing joyfully, Israel!  Be glad and exult with all your heart, daughter of Jerusalem! (3:14)

Mary the supreme daughter of Zion and purest flower of Israel!  Mary, the handmaid of the Lord, beloved of God because of her humility!  Mary, forgotten and almost despised by today’s feminists of greatest renown, with fullest public image!!

With Mary, how far we are, indeed, from the modern understanding of personal integrity which makes the hearts of so many people today unresponsive and indeed impervious to God’s offer, in Christ, of true righteousness; because such divine righteousness can only enter the hearts of those prepared to hear Jesus’ call to repentance and be willing to respond with humility before God:

From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."  (Matthew 4:17)

St. Paul in today’s reading taken from his first letter to the Corinthians tells us:

Whoever boasts, should boast in the LORD;

and he insists that God wills that:

            No human being might boast before God.

God, Paul says, chose what is foolish by human reckoning: the weak, and those whom the world regards as common and contemptible.  Not, indeed, that God loves ignorance or lack of moral fibre; but rather that He wants to give us true virtue, heavenly wisdom, and divine strength, gifts that will free us from the chains of sin and allow us to fulfil our authentic selves by becoming, in Jesus, God’s true children.  In order to change the old stale water of our stagnant lives into best wine God must first of all get rid of the illusory human righteousness involved in ‘personal integrity’ and ‘woke justice’; for it is only when such modern boasts have been shown up in all their deceitfulness that God can then make us, as Paul says, members of:

Christ Jesus, Who became for us wisdom from God -- and righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

People of God, observe how wisely, how lovingly, Mother Church tries to lead us to a true and fruitful understanding of Jesus in the Scriptures!  These two readings from Zephaniah and St. Paul are most helpful if we are to understand and try to live the message of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.  It is our human pride – we cannot even recognize the complementarity of MEN and WOMEN !! -- which so blinds us that we are rendered unable to recognize what is true and what is false, what is real and what is illusory, what is ours and what is of God.  The gentle, who do not fight for power, the merciful, who are unwilling to condemn, the peacemakers, who refuse to malign others, such people cannot prosper on a diet which feeds “personal integrity”, because they find it poisonous.  Neither can the worldly ‘woke’ understand what they regard as the  indecisiveness and weakness of those who are unwilling to condemn, the ‘flabbyness’ of those who, in order to preserve peace, are loath to speak ill of others.  And, of course, the worldly ones, so eager to assert and stand up for their own personal integrity, are bound to be disgusted with what they regard as the insipid and servile attitude of those the prophet so lovingly mentioned in our first reading:

The remnant of Israel will do no wrong and tell no lies, nor will a deceitful tongue be found in their mouths.

 The words of Jesus at the end of the Beatitudes are totally alien to those committed to this world, its standards, and its aspirations; for such people, they are not so much mysterious words, as utterly ridiculous words, depicting a despicable attitude:

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.

However, for those who have begun put on the righteousness of Christ, those words are, indeed, both eternal and true; for, as authentic disciples they have learned to recognize and to confess the truth about Jesus, together with the very first committed followers of His  -- Peter and the holy apostles -- who said of Him:

Lord, You alone have the words of life.