Monday 8 June 2026
1 Kings 17:1-6. Our help is from the Lord who made heaven and earth – Ps 120(121):1-8. Matthew 5:1-12.
Be attentive to others’ needs
The beatitudes lay before us a way of understanding the moral life to which Christians are called. The Jesuit moral theologian Fr Lucas Chan SJ argued that at the heart of that life are the poor in spirit. They are a referent for the rest of the beatitudes in that we are called to be gentle, to mourn, and so on, from an awareness of, and a relationship with, the poor in spirit. The poor in spirit, Fr Chan wrote, are those who are materially poor and who find in this condition the capacity for an attitude, indeed the virtue, of humility. Humility calls each of us to accept the poverty of our own condition. The beatitudes that follow point to the various ways each of us needs to be attentive to others’ needs, and so in a special way to those who are poor, those who have been dispossessed.
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