Christian Art | Jesus Preaches The Sermon On The Mount
Office Of Readings | Week 22, Saturday, Ordinary Time | A Reading From The Sermon Of Pope Saint Leo The Great On The Beatitudes | Happiness Of Christ’s Kingdom
‘The happiness of Christ’s kingdom.’
Pope Saint Leo the Great continues his exposition of the Beatitudes, moving from the blessing on the poor in spirit to those pronounced on those who mourn and on the meek (Matthew 5:4–5). His reflections trace both the inner character of these dispositions and their eschatological fulfilment.
The mourning that Christ declares blessed is distinguished from ordinary human grief. Leo contrasts the ‘lamentation that the whole human race indulges in’ with the tears of repentance shed by the saints. Such mourning arises not from misfortune or loss but from the recognition of sin – both one’s own and that of others. This connects to the biblical tradition of penitential lament, found in the psalms and the prophets, where sorrow over sin leads to conversion and renewed relationship with God (cf. Psalm 51, Joel 2:12–13). The emphasis is not on lamenting the effects of divine justice but on grieving over human wrongdoing, which separates people from God. In this way, mourning is directed not at what has been suffered but at the deeper cause of estrangement from God.
Leo then turns to Christ’s blessing on the meek. He interprets meekness as humility, gentleness, and a willingness to endure injury without retaliation. In patristic exegesis, meekness is often associated with Christ’s own self-description: ‘I am gentle and humble of heart.’ (Matthew 11:29) The promise that the meek will ‘inherit the earth’ is read in more than a literal sense. Leo sees it as a pledge of the kingdom of heaven, but he also interprets ‘earth’ symbolically as the renewed, glorified body of the saints. Here he draws on Pauline teaching: ‘this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.’ (1 Corinthians 15:53)
In Leo’s vision, meekness leads to an inheritance marked by permanence, peace, and unity. The body, transformed by resurrection, will be a secure possession, wholly integrated with the soul and Spirit. Thus the promise to the meek is not only a future reward but also a transformation of the human condition: what is weak and perishable becomes strong and immortal, what is burdensome becomes honourable.
Leo’s sermon demonstrates how the Beatitudes were understood not merely as moral exhortations but as revelations of the shape of Christian existence, culminating in the hope of resurrection and the kingdom.
A Reading From The Sermon Of Pope Saint Leo The Great On The Beatitudes | Happiness Of Christ’s Kingdom
After pronouncing his blessing on poverty, the Lord added Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Dearly beloved, this mourning that is promised eternal comfort has nothing in common with the afflictions of this world. No-one is made blessed by the kind of lamentation that the whole human race indulges in. The sighs and blessed tears of the saints have another cause. Holy sorrow comes from contemplating one’s own sins and the sins of others. It does not weep at the actions of divine justice but at the sins committed by human wickedness. It is the one who does evil who is to be pitied here, not the one who suffers it: for what the evil man has done thrusts him down to punishment, while what the just man has put up with leads him up into glory.
Then the Lord added Blessed are the meek, for they shall have the earth for their inheritance. To the meek and gentle, to the lowly and unassuming, to all who are prepared to endure injury – to these the earth is promised. This is not a small or unimportant inheritance, as if ‘the earth’ were somehow distinct from a dwelling-place in heaven: in fact, you must understand it as meaning that only the meek will enter the kingdom of heaven. This earth that is promised to the meek, that is to be given to the gentle to possess, is the body of the saints, whose humility will raise them up and clothe them in the glory of immortality, united at last with the Spirit of unity. Then the outer self will belong to the inner self at last, a peaceful and secure possession.
The meek will possess this inheritance in everlasting peace and their right to it will never grow less. Our present perishable nature must put on imperishability and this mortal nature must put on immortality, so that a danger to the soul becomes a reward and what was onerous becomes an honour.
Christian Prayer With Jesus
Lord Jesus Christ,
you have promised comfort to those who mourn
and inheritance to those who are meek.
Grant us sorrow for sin
and gentleness of spirit in our dealings with others,
so that, sharing in your humility,
we may also share in the glory of your resurrection.
You live and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Glossary Of Christian Terms
Beatitudes – The blessings pronounced by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1–12), expressing the values of the kingdom of heaven.
Mourning – In this context, sorrow for sin, both personal and communal, leading to repentance and openness to God’s mercy.
Meekness – Humility, gentleness, and patient endurance, modelled by Christ himself.
Inheritance of the earth – In biblical and patristic interpretation, both a promise of the kingdom of heaven and the transformation of the body in resurrection.
Immortality / imperishability – Terms drawn from Paul’s teaching (1 Corinthians 15) describing the transformation of the human body at the resurrection.
Spirit of unity – A phrase indicating the Holy Spirit’s work in binding the glorified body and soul together in eternal peace and wholeness.
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‘Death,’ says His Grace, ‘throws it all apart. For we are not as we should be. Faith requires our adjustment to God’s truth. God’s triumph in a very real sense requires in us the loss of our everything. Which, as with Mary at the other end of Jesus’s life, is God’s truth.’ The Gospel reading is of John 11: 1-45, which is a long passage, and His Grace’s homiletic theme commences in textual wilderness. Our brokenness – in this place – a family home. Our faith, our doubt, our death… The irruption – death, doubt, fear – within our precious scenes and our most intimate places. Our domesticity. His Grace speaks from the chair, as is a bishop’s prerogative, and says: ‘So much is obscure in the Gospels. We’re always reaching through them. We’re never there. Really, we never are. Our knowledge, our understanding, of the Gospels is never complete, and with each reading comes a new revelation. There are always new riches there. Just as there are between all of us, between myself and you. The Gospels are living texts. This is a part of the conversation we have with our own Christianity. It is a part of who we are in our relationship with Jesus. We are in this sense always on the brink. ‘So yes, there is plenty that doesn’t seem to make sense. As one of the order of bishops, we would be lying if we said that weren’t the case. They are not easy texts to encounter, if by that word we may signify something more than a superficial glancing off against, but rather a profound search for the word of God. The Gospels are written by people who had their own ideas, and often didn’t know what had really happened. Luke is quite explicit on this point. His is an investigation, from the explicitly claimed point of view of an historian, rather than that of a first-hand witness, who attempts, so he says, to set out an orderly account, out of the chaos, the sheer muddle, that has been handed down to him. It is possible to imagine Luke researching and composing his account after many years, when there has arisen a desire to know what exactly happened, and this implies a certain call to faith and certain demands of historicity, to historical exactitude. So in these different ways, the people of the first years of Christian faith are in the dark. There is also a decisive need to define the life of Jesus. And people didn’t get Jesus. The whole meaning of Christianity is only now beginning to take root throughout the composition. So much needs to be evangelized. The light shines almost in tentative fashion like that first star, which drew the wise men from the east to our Lord’s cradle. ‘John’s is widely held to be a very late Gospel. There are others who say that John’s Gospel might have been the first to acquire its true shape, because it most fully expresses Jesus, as we know him to be, as members of the Catholic Church. We don’t really know when any of this is being written, but we get a feel in John of a Gospel refined over many years, through a community. So there’s a lot going on there that I’d like you to think about. ‘What I would like to suggest to you is that, while within the Gospels we are often confronted with clues, guesswork, stories that have been handed down through so many people, and so in this sense we might find ourselves to be in the wilderness, this is the very desolate space itself to which we must give ourselves in order to experience Christ’s full redemption in our lives. I suggest it is for God’s glory that we do so. ‘As we become aware of ourselves, in this seminary, we find ourselves in a very secure, comfortable setting, and there are signs of Easter everywhere. Within the very fabric of these buildings, our Lord is risen; our Lord lives. But now this is our Lenten journey, where death enters, where death breaks us. We are to ride into Jerusalem in triumph, and then we are to be utterly broken, all hope gone, our hope extinguished. And really, I suggest to you, it is only by inhabiting this thought, as if we don’t know Easter is there, that our new life can follow, just when we have given up all hope, when every promise that Jesus made to us seems to have been cancelled. ‘And here now we have the story of Lazarus. I should like to suggest to you that we have a very powerful call now. In our very comfortable space, our domesticity, with all this comfort, where so very little might seem to happen each day, so it might seem to you, there is a disturbance within all of this comfort, and that is a disturbance within ourselves, and that is our call to Jesus. I think it is correct to say that our most comfortable places break in the light of Jesus from the inside, in order that we may take the necessary steps to be with Jesus. ‘Faith is not comfortable. I think that we can all receive the message of the rolling away of the rock from the tomb of Lazarus to say something of vital importance to ourselves concerning our openness to God’s love. The rock we roll away can come in all sorts of guises, but we know when we are blocked, and I firmly believe if we are truthful then we know where those blocks might be. ‘Next Sunday, which will be Palm Sunday, we process as it were to Jerusalem, to begin our Holy Week. Now as I speak to you we are on the brink. Even now, I suggest it might be very good for all of us to lay aside what we think we know, to fall apart a little, and so […]
