4th Sunday of Ordinary Time: January 31/ February 1, 2026

Good stewards are those who receive God’s gifts gratefully, cultivate them responsibly, share them with others lovingly, and return them with increase to the Lord.

What can this week’s readings teach us about stewardship?

Our Gospel from Matthew recounts what we know as Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. . . It is the first of 5 teaching sections of Jesus which St. Matthew gives us in his Gospel.

This Sermon on the Mount comes pretty early on in Jesus’ public ministry, as it is comes in chapter 5 of the Gospel, the only thing that has taken place so far in Matthew’s Gospel, other than the birth of Jesus and the visit by the Magi, Is Jesus Baptism and the calling of his first disciples, as we heard told the last two Sundays.

In all 4 Gospels, this Sermon is the longest continuous section of Jesus speaking, and it is perhaps the most widely quoted of Jesus’ words. It contains, after all, the central teachings on discipleship: the Beatitudes.

Pope Leo has this to say about the Beatitudes: “They are the essential path to holiness, a ‘new law’ of happiness found in spiritual poverty, meekness, mercy, and justice, challenging worldly logic by revealing God’s plan, transforming life’s struggles into spiritual growth.” The Beatitudes, Leo says, are a means of embracing seemingly counter-cultural virtues, seeing suffering as a path to God’s glory, and recognizing that God’s grace makes the seemingly impossible, truly possible.

A good steward, then, would embrace the Beatitudes and strive to live them, although this is far from easy to achieve. And both our other readings give us a key element necessary to be able to embrace the Beatitudes and be good stewards in God’s kingdom. And that is: humility: the ability to know our proper place in creation, that God is God and we are not. God is in charge, and we are not, no matter how hard we try to be.

The Prophet Zephaniah says: “Seek the Lord, all you humble of the earth.” For it is the lowly who seek justice. . . and who take refuge in the Lord. And St. Paul asks the Corinthians to consider their calling, for it is possible that they, like many who felt they were “chosen”, had an inflated opinion of themselves, thinking that God favored them above others. But Paul gently reminds them, and us, that God doesn’t work that way. That they, and we, are not chosen because we are great, but because God is great.

Paul knew this firsthand; he was an educated man, but he understood that the Lord selected fishermen, a despised tax collector, a political extremist, and other common men long before he called men like Paul. The shepherds, the lowly, arrived at the manger first – and then came the wise men. . . Paul uses three words to emphasize his meaning: righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Righteousness on our part is trying to live as Jesus asks us. Sanctification, that we only become holy by following closely after Jesus. And redemption reminds us of the sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf so that we can be free from sin and choose to become more Christ-like.

So to be a good steward, we need to humble ourselves, become those lowly who take refuge in the Lord, and imitate Christ, who was poor in spirit, mournful, and meek. Like Christ, who hungered and thirsted for righteousness, and who was merciful, a peacemaker, clean of heart, and willing to be persecuted, for our sake, and for the sake of all the world.

Not exactly things ordinary people strive for. But we are not ordinary people; for once we are baptized, we have the extraordinary gift of grace at work in our lives, our superpower, that allows us to do what others may think is impossible, to live for Christ rather than ourselves, and to find joy in doing it!

The world is, of course, chasing after very different character traits and values.

So the question we are called to answer is: are we humble enough to reflect the Beatitudes in our lives? And if not, then why not?? Because they have to be of value to us, if we are to be good stewards of all the many gifts God has entrusted to us.