Baptisms

Recent Baptisms

No Recent Baptisms

Reflection

The secret subject of the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus. It is only on the basis of this subject that we can discover the entire meaning of this key text of Christian faith and life. The Sermon on the Mount is not some exaggerated and unreal moral lecture that loses any definite relationship to our life and seems completely impractical. Nor is it, as the opposite hypothesis would have, merely a mirror in which it becomes clear that everyone is and remains a sinner in everything and can only reach salvation through unconditional grace. This contrast between moralism and the theory of pure grace, with a complete antithesis between law and Gospel, does not help one to enter into the text but rather to repel it from one.

Christ is the middle, the mean, that unites the two, and it is only discovering Christ in the text that opens it up for us and enables it to become a word of hope…. If we get to the bottom of the Beatitudes, the secret subject, Jesus, appears everywhere. He it is in whom it becomes clear what it means to be poor in spirit: it is he who mourns, who is meek, who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, who is the merciful. He is pure in heart, he is the peacemaker, he is persecuted for righteousness’ sake. All the sayings of the Sermon on the Mount are flesh and blood in him. In this way we can finally discern…its actual definite instructions for us: the Sermon on the Mount is a summons to follow Jesus Christ in discipleship.

Castlecomer Parish
Church of the Immaculate Conception

Baptisms

Recent Baptisms

No Recent Baptisms

Archives