Homily for the Sunday Mass of February 1st: “Learning to be poor in spirit so that we may be led by Jesus”

Sunday, February 1, 2026
4rd Sunday of the Year – Year A

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1^st Reading: Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13
Psalm 145 (146), 7, 8, 9ab, 10b
2^rd reading: 1 Corinthians 1, 26-31
Gospel: Matthew 5, 1-12a

This is how Jesus begins, in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, this great discourse which will last 3 chapters — Lent will interrupt this reading, but we will still have two Sundays before Lent.

What are these Beatitudes? What is this happiness that Jesus proclaims? This happiness is for today; it is not a future happiness, it is a present happiness: happy now the poor in spirit, happy now those who weep, happy now The gentle ones. A happiness heralded as a blessing, as a gift of grace.

After these Beatitudes, Jesus continues by returning to the second part of the Tablets of the Law, to show their profound demands, to invite us to go to the very end of what God's commandments contain. For Jesus did not come to abolish the law, as he himself will say: he came to fulfill it and to enable his disciples, through him, with him, and in him, to fulfill in their turn—that is, to live in fullness what God wills. We ask this daily in the Lord's Prayer, which the Lord taught us: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Living God's commandments the way Jesus lived them, living God's commandments to the fullness of charity, will inevitably transform us. Taking the Gospel seriously—that is, God's will lived out in humanity—transforms us. Following Jesus and allowing ourselves to be guided by his word changes us. And we will, little by little, learn to weep not only for our own sins, but also for the sins of our brothers and sisters and the misery of the world. And we will see our hearts disarmed of their violence and grow in gentleness. And we will be increasingly filled with a love of justice. We will love not only to receive God's mercy, but to show mercy in turn. Our hearts will be purified. We will work for peace… and this cannot please everyone, and we will encounter opposition, as Jesus did, and persecution.

Jesus knows that those who let themselves be guided by him will encounter the same situations that he himself will first experience; so he gives them these blessings, which are an anticipation of heaven.

Why “blessed now” in these situations, which are in fact situations of weakness in this world that has become violent since sin entered it in Genesis chapter 3? Why give these blessings? Because we must encourage those who will experience, in this violent world, another way of life. In fact, what Jesus calls us to live is already the life of Heaven, already the life of the Homeland toward which we journey: to live, even in exile, the grace of the Homeland, to live on this earth as already citizens of Heaven. This is what the Lord teaches us. This is our vocation. And for this, we must become poor in heart, literally poor in spirit. And the Beatitudes end with a half-verse that is not in the lectionary; this last verse says: “This is how they treated the prophets who were before you.” Now, the prophets are those who are filled with the Spirit of God. It is because the Holy Spirit is given to us that we can live what Jesus shows us, lives himself and calls us to live in his footsteps.

But to receive this grace of living like Jesus, doing the Father's will, we must be poor in spirit. Saint Teresa returns to this notion of being poor in spirit on several occasions. Her sister Céline, in religion Sister Geneviève of the Holy Face, recalls this in her *Counsels and Memories*, and I quote:

Thérèse told me: "You give yourself over too much to what you do, as if everything were your ultimate goal, and you constantly hope you've arrived; you're surprised to fall. You must always expect to fall! You worry about the future as if it were up to you to arrange it, so I understand your anxiety; you're always saying to yourself: 'Oh my God, what will come of my hand!' Everyone seeks omens like that, it's the common path; those who don't are simply the simple-minded."

But what does it mean, in Thérèse's eyes, to be poor in spirit? It means letting oneself be worked by the Lord. In an important letter, letter 197, which comments on what we now call manuscript B, Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus writes to her sister and godmother, Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart: "O my dear Sister, I beg you, understand your little girl, understand that to love Jesus, to be his victim of love, the weaker one is, without desires or virtues, the more one is suited to the workings of this consuming and transforming Love… The mere desire to be a victim is enough, but one must consent to remain poor and without strength, and therein lies the difficulty, for 'The truly poor in spirit, where can one find them?'" "We must seek Him far away," said the psalmist… He doesn't say we must seek Him among great souls, but "far away," that is, in lowliness, in nothingness… Ah! Let us then remain far away from all that glitters, let us love our littleness, let us love to feel nothing, then we will be poor in spirit and Jesus will come to find us, however far away we may be, He will transform us into flames of love… Oh! How I wish I could make you understand what I feel!… It is trust and nothing but trust that must lead us to Love… (LT 197 to Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, September 13, 1896)

Yes, brothers and sisters, the Christian life is not about saying to Jesus: "Lord, I have understood everything you explain, I will do it"... The Christian life is first and foremost about welcoming this love of Jesus, taking time in prayer to let ourselves be loved by Jesus as we are, and letting grow in us the desire to respond to his love with our poor and small love without pretension, without thinking that we are going to do great things for the Lord, by offering him our poverty, our weakness, but also our good will; and by seeking to concretely embody this good will out of love for him, Jesus, throughout our day, in all the acts of daily life.

In her manuscript A, Thérèse says:

And I see that all is vanity and affliction of spirit under the Sun… that the only good is to love God with all one's heart and to be poor in spirit here below…

And in manuscript C, she will add:

No, there is no joy comparable to that experienced by the truly poor in spirit.

Let us ask Thérèse, brothers and sisters, to truly teach us to be poor in spirit ourselves, so that we may be led by Jesus to the Kingdom.

Amen.