Today`s theme is really about having the humility to acknowledge our need of Almighty God, to give Him thanks and glorify his Holy Name and to gratefully accept his grace to accept our nothingness and in so doing recognise that he, in turn, gives us a share in the wisdom, virtue and holiness of Our Lord Jesus Christ himself.   The prophet Zephaniah sets the scene in chapter 2 and verse 3 when he says:   `Seek the Lord all you, the humble of the earth, who obey his commands.`

The Gospel reading from Matthew 5, verses 1 to 12, is the most important part of the Lord`s Sermon on the Mount for it is the keystone of each Christian`s integral relationship with Jesus Christ.   According to Matthew this is the Lord`s first sermon.   There are many sermons in the gospels but none surpass this great sermon.   Note too that Matthew relates to us that when “Jesus saw the crowds, He went up the mountain, and after he sat down, His disciples came to Him.”   Why did the Lord go up the mountain ?   Well on a purely practical point we already know that there were crowds so he would have the advantage of seeing them all – and seeing them all he sat down.   At that time, as now, it is usually those in authority who sit down before an audience.   It was, after all, only when he sat down that his disciples came to him.   I remember from my days at St. Stepehn`s House where I, like Fr. Morris, Fr. Miller and countless others, trained for the sacred ministry that on Saturday mornings the students gathered together in the chapel for music and singing practice in readiness for Sunday and the following week.   The Principal usually conducted but if we went in and saw a large chair in front of the altar some wag would say, `Look out we are in for a speech from the throne!`    This meant that something or someone had upset the Principal.   On this occasion, after he was seated, Jesus called his disciples to him.

Matthew wrote his gospel with Jewish converts in mind and so portrays Jesus as The new Moses.   Moses for the Jewish people was, and is, the Prophet without peer.   Remember that in the last chapter of the book Deuteronomy, (34 verses 10-12) we find these words, “there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, none like him for all the signs and wonders which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt,…and for all the mighty power and all the great and terrible deeds which Moses wrought in the sight of all Israel.”

Even more important that all the signs and wonders which Moses worked is the fact that the Lord God chose him, Moses, to bear the Tablets of the Law, the Ten Commandments, to His People.   In the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, from slavery to freedom, there was that most important stop at the foot of Mt. Sinai which Moses ascended to receive from God the Ten Commandments.   Moses alone went up the mountain and then returned to the people to give them God`s Law – the means by which they might keep right with God.
Here in Jesus` Sermon on the Mount there is a radical difference for it is not only Jesus who ascends the mountain but he draws up his disciples with him.   It is not a voice from the heavens that speaks to a prophet but now the New Moses, God-made-Flesh, Jesus the second person of the Holy Trinity. Speaks to His people face to face.   Jesus gives to His followers, and to us  His people by adoption and grace, not ten laws but eight beatitudes to “those” and a ninth to us when he says, `Happy are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of evil against you on my account.   Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.`

There is, of course, a unity between the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament and the Beatitudes of Jesus for both are a gift from God and so essential foundations that guide the human heart to the heart and will of Almighty God.   The Ten Commandments are laws to be obeyed for the greater good of society through their moral structure directing us towards God.   Without them how would our frail and weak human nature ever realise the gift of Divine goodness?   So we too need these laws just as the Jewish people, our ancestors in faith, needed them.   Jesus makes us aware that our Heavenly Father is more than a law giver who demands obedience for the Beatitudes of Jesus give a spiritual and eternal dimension to our relationship with God in Jesus not built on law but on the Spirit.   In the Beatitudes make the root of our relationship with God centred on Jesus for He reveals to us the heart of God through his own heart of love.

`Blessed are the poor in spirit` is understood as realising and accepting our total dependence upon God.   Once we accept this we reflect the attitude of praise and dependence in the mind of Jesus in his perfect union with the Father.   Jesus then looks for those who share the Divine mind of praise in their dependence upon God for then it is that ewe know the Kingdom of God.   The Beatitudes show us what God wants for and of us in the awareness of His love for us.   He is the love of God given for the world.   It is no accident that Jesus spent most of his time on in his ministry on earth with the poor, the rejected, the blind, the crippled, the rejected and with sinners.

Each of us belongs to God and we are in good hands.   Let us praise and thank His Holy Name.
Amen