Fr Paul says today’s reading is a very famous one from Matthew’s Gospel (5: 1-12) in which Jesus shares ‘The Beatitudes’ with the crowd.

This passage is one, and is part of, where the teachings of Jesus are gathered all together. Scholars claim that Matthew had available to him a large collection of the sayings of Jesus, some of which we hear in today’s Gospel.  This passage is the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount and it contains eight beatitudes. If you look at the first and last of these beatitudes, Fr Paul notes, they talk about the kingdom of heaven so these are the conditions of entry into the kingdom; these are the spiritual attributes necessary for those who want to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

For our prayer today, Fr Paul says, we might reflect on these eight beatitudes and apply them to our own lives