4th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A Being Truly Poor in Spirit Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12
Fr Jijo Kandamkulathy CMF Claretian Missionaries
The gospel today consists of the beatitudes. It is futile to attempt to make a reflection on the whole of the beatitudes in this small space. Instead, we concentrate on the first one, “Blessed are the poor.” It is hard to say in how many ways this beatitude has been interpreted.
Some interpret that the beggars, the exploited were the kind of people God is pleased with and it should be ensured that all become like them! It is, of course, an absurd, deviant interpretation. The humanity dreamed by God is not the one in which his children are poor but one in which “no one is poor” (Acts 4:34).
Others believe that the “poor in spirit” are those who, while maintaining the possession of their property, are detached from them and generous in bestowing offerings to the less fortunate. But alms—even recommended in some (rare) biblical texts—do not introduce into the world the “new justice”; it does not solve the root problem of the inequitable division of assets because the concept believes in the existence of the rich and poor on earth.
The principle of “to each his own” that underpins our justice seems wise and sensible. But it stems from a false premise that something belongs to someone, while, in fact, everything is of God: “The Lord’s is the earth and its fullness, the universe and its inhabitants” (Ps 24:1). That someone is only an administrator of goods, and s/he will be called to render an account of this administration.
All possessive adjectives that we use express an erroneous conception of reality: if all is of God, it makes no sense to talk about mine, yours, and not even of ours because everything is of the Creator.
In respect to goods, Jesus never assumed the attitude of contempt that characterized the cynical philosophers. For him, the “dishonest wealth” also becomes good when it is distributed to the poor (Lk 16:19). However, although he never condemned it, he regarded it as a threat, “an obstacle—insurmountable for many—to enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 19:23). The more a person is favored, the more goods one has, the more one is tempted to tie one’s heart with them to keep them for oneself and employ them selfishly.
From those who want to follow him—those who want to be holy—Jesus asks for total detachment. “None of you may become my disciple if you don’t give up everything you have” (Lk 14:33).
It is in the context of this essential requirement to share all that is available to us from God that the beatitude should be read.
Jesus does not exalt poverty as such. By adding the specification in spirit, he makes it clear that not all the poor are blessed. Only the ones who by free choice strip themselves of all and manage the assets according to God’s plan are blessed.
The poor in spirit are those who decide not to possess anything for themselves and make available to others all that they receive. Mind you: the poor according to the gospel is not the one who has nothing but s/he who does not keep anything for herself/himself.
Someone who is miserable need not be “poor in spirit.” S/he is not if s/he curses herself/himself and others, if s/he attempts to improve her/his own condition with violence and deceit, if s/he thinks of oneself by losing interest in others, or if s/he cultivates the dream of winning the prestigious position of the rich one day.
Voluntary poverty is for all; the renunciation of the selfish use of all property that one owns is not something optional, not a counsel reserved for some who want to be heroes or more perfect than others. This is what distinguishes a saint, every Christian.
The promise that accompanies the beatitude does not refer to a distant future. It does not guarantee entry into heaven after death but announces an immediate joy: “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” From the moment one makes the choice to become and to remain poor, one enters the “kingdom of heaven,” and belongs to the family of saints.
This beatitude is not a message of resignation but of hope: no one will be in need when all become “poor in spirit,” when they put the gifts they have received from God in the service of others, as does God, “the Holy One” who, while possessing everything, is infinitely poor: he holds nothing back, gives everything, even his Son.
Indebted to Fr. Armellini SCJ for textual analysis
This Sunday’s Gospel presents us not merely with a sequence of events, but with a divine choreography, a purposeful movement of the Heart of God into the heart of human darkness. When Jesus hears of John’s arrest, He does not retreat in fear, but advances in obedience. His withdrawal to Galilee is a tactical move of grace, a deliberate positioning of the Divine Light where the shadows are deepest.
Consider the geography of salvation. He leaves Nazareth, the hidden life, and establishes his base in Capernaum, a bustling crossroads. This is no accident. To understand the profound weight of this choice, we must recall the fractured history of this land. The region of Zebulun and Naphtali, the “Galilee of the Gentiles,” was a land soaked in history’s tears. It was part of the ancient northern Kingdom of Israel, which broke from Jerusalem after Solomon. This political split deepened into a cultural and spiritual prejudice. The southern kingdom of Judah, with its temple in Jerusalem, often viewed the north with suspicion—as a place of schism, diluted faith, and compromised purity. This prejudice was cemented by tragedy: Galilee was the first to be ravaged by the Assyrian invasion in the 8th century BC. Its people were exiled and foreigners were settled in their land. Though later reconquered and re-Judaized, it remained, in the minds of the Jerusalem elite, a periphery, a mixed and less-reliable “Galilee of the Gentiles.” To sit in its darkness was to dwell under the twin shadows of historical trauma and religious disdain.
And it is precisely here, in this borderland of broken unity and inherited prejudice, that the prophet Isaiah’s ancient promise ignites like the dawn. Jesus is that “great light.” The prophecy He fulfills (Isaiah 9:1-2) is not merely about illumination, but about restoration and unification. The Messiah’s light was prophesied to dawn first on the north, on the very people who walked in that deep darkness, as a sign of God’s faithfulness to all His scattered children. The dream embedded in Isaiah’s larger oracle is indeed of a reunited kingdom under a Davidic heir—a child born who will carry the government on his shoulders, called “Prince of Peace,” whose dominion will have no end. By beginning here, Jesus is silently declaring a divine campaign not of conquest, but of reconciliation; He is the light that shines from the scorned north to draw all tribes, both of Judah and of wayward Israel, back into one flock.
He does not merely bring a message; He is the message. The Light has not been sent; it has arisen. In His very person, God’s reign pierces the gloom and begins to mend the ancient rift. This is the first stirring of the Kingdom: a divine invasion of compassion that seeks first the lost sheep of the house of Israel, starting in the most forgotten fold.
But how does this Kingdom propagate? Not with legions, but with a glance and an invitation. Behold the stunning simplicity of its foundation. He walks by the Sea of Galilee, the very stage of Isaiah’s prophecy. He sees Simon and Andrew, James and John—not scholars in synagogues, but laborers in the muck and mundanity of their trade. Their nets are tools for subsistence, symbols of a life cast upon the uncertain waters of daily survival.
His call is both a disruption and a breathtaking elevation: “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” He does not ask them to abandon their skill, but to transfigure its purpose. The patience, the discernment of currents, the laborious hauling—all will be taken up, healed, and redirected into the drama of gathering hearts into the net of God’s mercy.
What does this mean for us, who sit perhaps in our own forms of shadow? We need to believe that the Light deliberately seeks out our darkest, most “Gentile” borderlands—the parts of our hearts or our society we consider irredeemable or distant from God. He pitches his tent there. Second, His call to “repent” is our daily summons to turn our face from the shadows of sin, despair, or self-sufficiency to the ever-at-hand Kingdom revealed in His face. Third, He calls us in our ordinariness, amid our “nets.” He will use our lived experience, our skills and struggles, if we leave them at His command, to draw others into the light of communion.
The first part of today’s gospel narrates a scene after the conclusion of John the Baptist’s mission. Jesus moved from Nazareth to Capernaum. Capernaum was a village of fishermen and farmers that stretched for about three hundred meters along the western shore of Lake Gennesaret (Galilee). Galilee was inhabited by Israelites regarded by all as semi-pagans because they were born from the intermingling of different peoples. They were considered as people living in darkness and ignorance.
It became the center of his activities for nearly three years. The change of residence—a very trivial fact—has been read by Matthew in its theological significance as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy: “The people who lived in darkness have seen a great light: on those who live in the land of the shadow of death a light has shone” (v. 16). With this choice, Jesus indicates who are the first recipients of his light, not the pure Jews but the excluded, the distant.
In the second part of the passage, the calling of the first four disciples is narrated. It is more a piece of catechesis than a call narrative. The evangelist wants the disciple to understand what it means to say “yes” to Christ’s invitation to follow. It is an example, an illustration of what it means to be converted.
Matthew shows Jesus in constant movement. The one who is called must realize that he will not be granted any rest and there will not be any stop along the way. Jesus wants to be followed day and night and throughout life. There are no moments of exemption from commitments taken.
The answer, then, must be prompt and generous as that of Peter, Andrew, James and John who “immediately left their nets, their boat and their father, and followed him” (vv. 20, 22). The abandonment of one’s own father should not be misunderstood. It does not mean that anyone who becomes a Christian (or chooses the religious and consecrated life) must ignore one’s own parents. Among the Jewish people, the father was the symbol of the link with the ancestors and of attachment to tradition. And it is this dependence on the past that must be broken when it constitutes an impediment to welcome the novelty of the gospel. The history, the traditions, the culture of every people must be respected and valued. However, we know that not all the habits, customs, ways of life handed down are compatible with the message of Christ.
The demand of Jesus relates to the dramatic choice that the early Christians were called to do: choosing to become disciples they were rejected by the family, misunderstood by parents, expelled from the synagogues, and excluded from their people. For all, leaving the father implies the abandonment of everything that is incompatible with the gospel.
To the invitation to follow him, Jesus adds the charge: “I will make you fish for people” (v. 19). The image is taken from the work done by the first apostles. In biblical symbolism, the sea was the abode of the devil, of diseases and everything that opposed life. It was deep, dark, dangerous, mysterious, and terrible. In the sea, the monsters lived, and in it, even the most skilled sailors did not feel safe.
Fishing people means to get them out of the condition of death where they are. It means to pull them out from the forces of evil that, like the raging waters, dominate, engulf and overwhelm them.
The disciple of Christ does not fear the waves and courageously faces them, even when they are raging. He does not give up hope to save a sister or a brother, even when s/he is in a humanly desperate situation: a slave of drugs and alcohol, unbridled passion, irascible, aggressive and intractable character. In whatever situation he is he will be saved by the disciple of Christ.
Indebted to Fr. Armellini SCJ for textual analysis
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