Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A
February 01, 2026 – 10:30 AM
Saint Cecilia Catholic Community
Rev. David Justin Lynch
Zephaniah 2:3, 3:12-13 | Psalm 146:6-10
I Corinthians 1:26-31 | Matthew 5:3-12
+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
We all have a lens through which we encounter God and see the world. As we seek to resolve the problems we face, we wrestle with the clash between the long-term big picture and what we must do on a practical level to survive at this moment.
The Scriptures proclaimed today, however, do not ask us to solve that problem or any other. They ask us to see the world differently. They do not begin with policy or power, but with the heart of God, and therefore with the heart of humanity.
The prophet Zephaniah speaks of a remnant: a people humble and lowly, a people who seek refuge in the name of the Lord, and a people who do no wrong and speak no lies.
This remnant is not defined by strength or status. It is defined by truthfulness, humility, and restraint. This is not simply a moral description. It is an ontological one. “Ontological” means what something is at its deepest level. “Ontological” is not just what happens or what is allowed, but what kind of thing exists and what it is becoming.
Political activists and journalists waste too much time on whether the ICE murders in Minnesota were legally and/or morally justified. They fail to address the ontological issue: what has happened not only to individuals, but what do these horrific acts mean to our shared humanity?
Psalm 146 declares that the Lord reigns by raising up those bowed down, by protecting the stranger, by upholding the orphan and the widow. God’s kingship is not enforced through fear. It is revealed through care for the vulnerable. This is where today’s Scriptures become painfully concrete for us.
The Minnesota ICE murders have shaken the entire United States. Not only have lives been lost, but families are grieving. Communities, including churches, are fearful. Here at Saint Cecilia, people are not showing up in large numbers like they formerly did for Baptisms and other sacraments. And overall, the public square is filled with competing narratives, anger, and confusion.
Our church community does not enter this moment as a partisan voice. We enter as a truth-telling and healing presence. And before we judge, before we defend or condemn, we must first ask a threshold question: What has happened to the image of God?
I refuse to call anyone an “illegal alien.” The current immigration laws are immoral on their face. Any duty to obey the law stops when the laws are immoral by God’s standards. By Biblical standards, the United States Immigration laws are immoral.
The Book of Exodus recounts the Israelites’ mass migration from Egypt to escape oppression and to find safety in a new land. In that book and elsewhere, God tells his people to welcome aliens with compassion and empathy, not to deport them.
The Old Testament narrates two major deportations of the Jewish people, the Assyrian Deportation in the Eighth Century B-C, for purposes of ethnic cleansing, and the Babylonian Deportation of the Sixth Century B-C to enhance the power of despotic dictator Nebuchadnezzar. Deportations are NOT favorably viewed in the shared history of Jews and Christians. Deportation is a sin against human dignity and not aligned with the values of the Kingdom of God.
Every human person, citizen or not, is created in the image and likeness of God. When blood is shed in the public space, something more than the law has been breached. Our shared humanity has been wounded.
Saint Paul, writing to the Corinthians, helps us understand why. He reminds us that God does not reveal Himself through dominance or self-justification. God chooses what is weak, what is low, what is despised, not those who boast in earthly power. Undocumented migrants are not committing any sin by being undocumented. Immigration laws human laws. The sin lies with the system itself, because, as we have seen over the past year, it makes violence inevitable.
Gregory of Nyssa teaches that fallen humanity repeatedly mistakes force for necessity. Some say that there was no alternative to mass deportations. They say that necessity and order require such measures. This does not mean the Church denies the need for public order or legitimate authority. But the church insists that whenever lethal force is used, humility, not triumph, must follow. Silence, not boasting, must precede explanation. Repentance, not self-congratulation, must be the end-game. We have seen none of that from the White House.
The Beatitudes in today’s Gospel are not inspirational poetry. They are the path of theosis, that is, the gradual healing of the human person so that divine love may dwell within us. Love and healing are not private virtues. They are how the Kingdom of God operates.
What does Jesus say about all this?
Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn.”
Not blessed are those who explain away the ICE murders. Not blessed are those who weaponize tragedy. Mourning comes before analysis. We mourn for those killed. We mourn with their families. We mourn for communities living in fear. And we mourn for a society that has grown accustomed to violence as background noise.
Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek.”
Meekness is not weakness. It is strength under restraint. It is power that refuses escalation. It is the authority that knows when to stop. When power loses gentleness, it ceases to resemble God and begins to resemble the demons, like ICE, which imposes order through terror. Meekness is the refusal to let fear dictate action.
Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”
Righteousness here does not mean moral superiority. It means a longing for truth, for a world set right. That hunger looks like insisting on transparency, on full accounting, on truth spoken plainly, without spin, without haste, without concealment. Truth is not merely accuracy; it is an unveiling. What resists the light is suspect. Yet we have a White House that refuses a transparent and honest investigation of the murders committed by the hitmen of its Gestapo.
Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful.”
Mercy is not indulgence. Mercy is the ability to see the icon of Jesus even in those we fear or oppose. Any system, whether political, legal, or cultural, that makes mercy structurally impossible is spiritually disordered. The United States immigration laws are spiritually disordered. Those laws are totally devoid of mercy. To condemn or omit mercy is not the nature of God, whom scripture describes as full of love and compassion, long suffering, and of great goodness. In Jesus Christ, mercy is not merely taught. Mercy is action. Condemnation, however, is explicitly rejected as God’s primary purpose.
Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
Peace is not the absence of unrest. Peace is the restored community of God. If communities live in fear of encounters with authority, peace has not been achieved. Order has merely replaced the relationship. But mere order sanctifies violence with the language of inevitability. The matter is not closed while fear remains and truth is contested.
What, then, should Christians be saying right now?
First, every human death under state power is a tragedy requiring repentance, not public relations.
Second, truth-seeking is a spiritual discipline, not a threat to order. Truth says that de-escalation is not weakness but an expression of meekness blessed by Jesus.
Third, the poor, the migrant, the fearful, and those who grieve are not peripheral concerns; they are the place where the Kingdom is already pressing inward.
And finally, Christians must proclaim that the Beatitudes are not impractical ideals. They are the only path that will lead us away from the spiral of fear and retaliation that consumes societies.
The church’s task is to call the world to repentance, that is, to a turning away from structures that habituate death and toward practices that protect life. Our prayer must be, “You are a good God who loves humankind.”
May we learn to see one another, especially in moments of fear and conflict, that immigrants are not threats to be managed but gifts to be protected. And may the meek, the merciful, and the peacemakers inherit the earth.
Amen.