Fourth Sunday Integral 2026
Today our Introit sings “Save us, O Lord our God and gather us from the nations to give thanks to your holy name and make it our glory to praise you.” Isn’t that a prayer that God take us to heaven? We should plead to God every day that He save us from our own sinful condition and gather us with all the righteous to come to Him, give thanks and glory in our ability to praise Him all the way in eternity.
The prophet Zephaniah, one of the twelve so-called “minor” prophets, tells all the humble of the earth who have observed God’s law to “Seek the Lord.” Oh, oh! Many of us would be hard-pressed to claim the distinction of being among the “humble of the earth.” The prophet knew that and so told his listeners to “seek justice; seek humility: perhaps you may be sheltered on the day of the Lord’s anger.”
Why is the Lord angry? In fact, Zephaniah begins his prophecy with the Lord’s promise: “I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth.” The Lord’s wrath on Judah and all the surrounding nations is promised because almost every person in Zephaniah’s sight has abandoned right worship and right living. They were focused on amassing power and wealth and indulging in injustice and riotous idol worship. Instead of being so holy and righteous that they attracted people from every nation to come to the Jewish temple to pray and learn God’s commandments, the people of Judah were steeping themselves in sin and attracting nobody. They abandoned the covenants and earned the curses of Deuteronomy. God would sweep them away and leave only a remnant of Israel in the land once promised to Abraham and his descendants. In that renewed kingdom, “they shall do no wrong and speak no lies . . .pasture their flocks with none to disturb them.”
Within a handful of years, the Babylonians came up, destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, and carted off all the leading people of Judah to Babylon, where they were less than nothing and finally learned humility.
Our Gospel today is the beginning of the five sermons of Jesus that represent His “new Torah.” He goes up the mountain—which to Texans and others in the West would be considered a hill—just as Moses did. He sits down, as rabbis did in those days, to teach His followers. He gives words called the Beatitudes that give us a way of life. They are exactly the opposite of modern-day advice for earthly success. You know what I mean. Life coaches tell us to build up wealth, in a sense to live a life of greed. They say, “don’t worry, be happy.” “Be aggressive: tell people what you want and go for it.” “Do whatever you need to do to attain your objectives.” “Frequently treat yourself to pleasures; give yourself rewards for doing what you must do. Eat all the chocolate you want.” “Ignore anyone who stands in your way and even brush her aside if necessary.”
Everyone here and everyone outside this building has one core problem. Admit it. We all have felt a kind of emptiness deep inside ourselves. We are born with an understanding in our minds and wills that we are incomplete. We ARE incomplete. God’s perfect will for the first man and woman was that we would grow in His grace and be made divine, not by nature but by His grace. Humans turned their backs on that divine plan and lost that original grace. That’s the hole we feel in ourselves.
We rejected plan “A.” But God had a plan “B,” and it’s wonderful.
Jesus Christ, Son of God and son of Mary, assumed man’s nature and allowed Himself to be degraded all the way to crucifixion and burial so that He could rise from death and raise us up with Him. His presence fills the holes in our hearts. His grace does it all; all He needs from us is our cooperation in the plan, our own “be it done to me according to Thy Word.” We sacramentally are united to His death and burial so that in God’s good time we can be raised, body and soul, to glory, eternally praising the Blessed Trinity.
Jesus’s way of life is essentially an imitation of His own life. We are blessed in our poverty of spirit, our recognition of what is lacking in life, because that leaves us open to Him filling us with His Spirit. We are blessed when we mourn our own weakness and sinful behavior when His forgiveness and mercy console us. We are blessed when we replace harmful thoughts in our hearts with prayers for those who need them. When we imitate Jesus, who prayed for His persecutors even as He was horribly tortured on the cross, like the good thief near Him we are blessed by looking at Our Lord, who is the Resurrection and the Life.
Saint Paul, like Christ, gave up much to preach Christ all over the Greek-speaking world. He wrote his church in Corinth, generally made up of the lower classes, and encouraged them with his own version of the Beatitudes. He could have said “Blessed are the foolish in Christ for their witness shames all the ones who are worldly-wise. Blessed are the weak, for they are empowered by Christ to work wonders.” His Lord was Jesus Christ, who by His Resurrection and Ascension into heaven proved that He, and those who live in him, are wiser and stronger and holier than anyone who relies on worldly glory and power and wealth.
As the psalmist tells us today, “the Lord keeps faith forever. The Lord shall reign forever,” and we shall reign with Him in the Resurrection from the dead. Blessed be his holy Name forever.
