MASS READINGS
February 01, 2026 (Readings on USCCB website)
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Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Grant us, Lord our God, that we may honor you with all our mind, and love everyone in truth of heart. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
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From the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A: Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. (Matt 5:10-12).
Commentary on the Mass Readings for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A:
Today’s readings in the liturgy of the Word use the same theme of the poor, not only the needy but above everything else, those who founded their security and hope in God.
The First Reading is taken from the Book of the Prophet Zephaniah (one of the twelve minor prophets) 2: 3; 3: 12-13. It introduces the poor as those who are repressed by the inequities of the powerful and by injustice, those who never loose hope, who seek the Lord with trust and rely only on Him.
The Second Reading, taken from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians 1:26-31. St. Paul highlights that God’s choices don’t follow human reckoning. God does not single out the strong but chooses the small ones, the poor. God chooses the weakest and those who have no value or power in the eyes of the world. St Paul says ‘that no human being might boast before God’ (1 Cor 1:29) and it seams clear, therefore, that ones material goods and talents do not come from power or human virtues but only and exclusively from the Lord. The world is permanently scandalized, and yet called to conversion, by the apparent illogicality of Divine logic. The mystery and drama of the Word made flesh, is the scandal that is the stumbling block that some Christians have not yet fully comprehended.
The Gospel reading is taken from the Gospel of St. Matthew 5:1-12a. At the end of the Gospel of the Beatitudes, the poor appear as the privileged ones in the discourse, the definitive, true protagonists in the story.
The first recipients of the Beatitudes are, in fact, the ‘poor in spirit’, an expression that indicates those who have their hearts and consciences directed intimately to Our Lord. They are the expression of the just who are tried by moments of suffering and difficulties. However, they are called ‘blessed’ and ‘happy’ because God’s merciful and compassionate gaze rests on them. These are the poor that the Bible text really refers to. The poor in the Bible are the humbled, the ‘anawîm’, who bear a burden on their shoulders. They are given God’s favor and because of this the Word identifies them as just, meek and humble. All kinds of attitudes are included in the eight beatitudes. This way the true significance of the ‘just poor’ is revealed; the ones who don’t confide mainly in themselves but in God. The poor are those who detach themselves concretely and interiorly from the possession of persons and things and above all of themselves. The poor don’t find security in the gods of this world like success, power or pride but the true Lord God in Heaven.
Thus, the poor, meek and humble become a scandal before the world because they witness that one can found our lives on God, with the same certainty of His constant presence and so they confirm the existence and works of God. Each one of us is invited to verify where our certainty rests and if our daily life and actions proclaim God’s efficacious presence in the world.
—From the Dicastery for the Clergy
Meditation: "Fasching"—Mardi Gras: The Ground of Our Freedom
Fasching—Mardi gras—is certainly not a Church festival. Yet on the other hand, it is unthinkable apart from the Church's calendar. Thus if we reflect on its origin and significance, it can contribute to our understanding of faith.
Fasching has many roots, Jewish, pagan and Christian, and all three point to something common to men of all times and places. It shows a certain correspondence to the feast of Purim in the Jewish calendar, which recalls Israel's deliverance from the menace of persecution of the Jews in the Persian empire, a deliverance brought about, in the biblical account, by Queen Esther. The joyful abandon with which this feast is celebrated is intended to express the feeling of liberation, and on this day it is not only a memory but also a promise: the person who is in the hands of the God of Israel is already, in anticipation, freed from the snares of his enemies.
But behind this exuberant, worldly feast, which had and still has a place in the religious calendar, there is also an awareness of that temporal rhythm which was given classical expression in the Book of Ecclesiastes: "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted;… a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance" (Qo 3: iff.). Not everything is appropriate at all times; the human being needs a rhythm, and the year gives him this rhythm, both through creation and through the history which faith sets forth in the yearly cycle.
This brings us to the Church's year, which enables man to go through the whole history of salvation in step with the rhythm of creation, simultaneously ordering and purifying the chaotic multiplicity of our nature. Nothing human is omitted from this cycle of creation and history, and only in this way can all human reality, its dark side and its light side, the world of sense and the world of spirit, be saved. Everything finds its place in the whole, which gives it meaning and delivers it from its isolation. So it is foolish to want to prolong Fasching when business and one's agenda seem to recommend it: such extra time, artificially created by ourselves, turns into boredom; man is left alone as his own creator and feels truly forsaken. Then time is no longer the varied gift of creation and history but the monster which devours itself, the empty preoccupation with sameness, whirling us round in a circle of meaninglessness, ultimately devouring us as well.
Let us go back to think about the roots of Fasching. As well as the Jewish, there is the pagan prehistory, whose fierce and menacing features still stare at us in the masks worn in Alpine, Swabian and Alemannic parts of Germany. What lie behind this are the rites for driving out winter and banishing demonic powers: the changes involved in times and seasons seemed to threaten the world's continuance; it was necessary to secure the earth and its fruitfulness against the void to which, in the sleep of winter, the world seemed to come perilously close.
At this point we can observe something of great significance: in the Christian world the demonic mask becomes a light-hearted masquerade, the life-and-death struggle with the demons becomes fun and merriment prior to the seriousness of Lent. This masquerade shows us something we can often see in the psalms and in the prophets: it becomes a mocking of the gods, who no longer need to be feared by those who know the true God. The masks of the gods have become an amusing show, expressing the high spirits of those who can laugh at what once brought terror. To that extent, Fasching actually does contain elements of Christian liberation, the freedom of the One God, perfecting that freedom commemorated in the Jewish feast of Purim.
In the end, however, we are faced with a question: Do we still enjoy this freedom? Or is it not a fact that, ultimately, we would like to free ourselves from God, from creation and from faith, in order to be totally free? And is not the consequence of this that we are once again handed over to the gods, to commercial forces, to greed, to public opinion? God is not the enemy of our freedom but its ground. That is something we ought to relearn in these days. Only love that is almighty can ground a joy that is free from anxiety.
—From Seek That Which Is Above by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
