THE BEATITUDES February 1, 2026

The Gospel this Fourth Sunday of the year presents us with the opening words of Our Lord's great Sermon on the Mount, the words we call the Beatitudes. In these well-known words our Saviour indicates to us the qualities that mark life in His Kingdom, the virtues which must adorn the citizens of God's country. It is the Gospel we hear often on the feast days of saints, and especially on the Feast of All Saints in November, as if to remind us that the Beatitudes draw a picture for us of what a saint must be like. It is a Gospel that teaches us what it is to be holy, what it is to seek to be holy, to seek to be a saint.

     Of course, the Beatitudes also describe Our Lord Himself, and as Christ looks at us, His disciples, the Beatitudes are also the fruit which He seeks to bring forth from our lives. Pope Benedict XVI described it thus: “The Beatitudes express the meaning of discipleship.... what the Beatitudes mean cannot be expressed in purely theoretical terms; it is proclaimed in the life and suffering, and in the mysterious joy, of the disciple who gives himself over completely to following the Lord.” That is what we are all called to do, that is what makes us holy, makes us saints – our ever-closer following of Our Lord. The Beatitudes show us that power, wealth, earthly success, pride, self-satisfaction, egotism, are not the recipe for true happiness.

     As Mother Teresa of Calcutta taught, this lies in surrender of self, in the acceptance of God's will, and in the joyful realization that it is these things which matter above all else.                      ~  Fr. Paul Dobson.