The Sermon on the Mount is the great inaugural catechesis of Jesus, recorded by Saint Matthew in chapters 5–7 of his Gospel. On a hill in Galilee, before his disciples and the crowds, Christ traces in a single sweep the portrait of the disciple of the Kingdom: the Beatitudes, salt and light, the fulfilment of the Law, forgiveness, prayer, detachment, trust in the Father, the Golden Rule, the choice of the narrow gate. It is, in a now-classic phrase, the charter of Christian life.
This discourse is not a code of laws added to the Ten Commandments. Jesus shifts righteousness from the outward act to the heart: it is no longer enough not to kill — one must renounce anger; no longer enough not to commit adultery — one must purify one's gaze. Six times the sovereign formula returns — "You have heard that it was said… But I say to you" — by which Jesus speaks with an authority no prophet had dared to claim. At the end, "when Jesus finished these words, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes" (Mt 7:28–29).
The Sermon contains two treasures so great that each has its own article in Ignispedia: the eight Beatitudes, which form its gateway, and the Lord's Prayer, which stands at its centre. This article places them within the whole discourse and refers the reader to them for detail.
What follows presents where and when Jesus gave this sermon, how Matthew composed it as a new proclamation of the Law by a new Moses, what it teaches section by section, and how the Tradition of the Church — from Augustine to Benedict XVI — has read it without ever reducing it either to an impossible ideal or to a mere moral code.
What is the Sermon on the Mount?
The first of Matthew's five great discourses
The Gospel of Matthew is built around five great discourses of Jesus that punctuate its structure like five peaks: the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5–7), the missionary discourse (Mt 10), the parables of the Kingdom (Mt 13), the discourse on the life of the community (Mt 18), and the discourse on the last things (Mt 24–25). Each closes with an almost identical formula — "When Jesus had finished this discourse…" (Mt 7:28; cf. 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1).
The Sermon on the Mount is the first and most famous. Placed at the very beginning of the public ministry, just after the baptism, the temptations in the desert and the call of the first disciples, it functions as an inaugural manifesto: before recounting miracles and controversies in detail, Matthew lets the Master's voice be heard and draws the map of the Kingdom he proclaims. From the outset the reader knows what the one he will follow is calling him to.
Where and when did Jesus give this discourse?
The mountain in Galilee and the Mount of Beatitudes
Matthew sets the scene with sobriety: "Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up the mountain. He sat down, and his disciples came to him" (Mt 5:1)[1]. The text does not name the hill. The Greek definite article ("the" mountain) and the gesture of sitting down — the posture of a master teaching with authority, as later in the synagogue (Lk 4:20) — matter more than the exact topography.
Christian tradition has nevertheless located the event on a gentle height on the north-west shore of the Sea of Galilee, between Capernaum and Tabgha, overlooking the plain of Gennesaret. It has long been called the Mount of Beatitudes. Byzantine pilgrims already venerated the site; a Franciscan church on an octagonal plan — its eight sides recalling the eight Beatitudes — was built there in 1936–1938 by the Italian architect Antonio Barluzzi, the great builder of the Holy Land sanctuaries[2]. The natural amphitheatre of the hill, which carries the voice toward the shore, makes it plausible that a large crowd could have heard a speaker there.
The moment in the life of Jesus
In Matthew's composition, the Sermon opens the Galilean preaching. It comes after the first proclamation of the Kingdom — "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Mt 4:17) — and the call of Peter, Andrew, James and John. The crowds flock "from Galilee and the Decapolis, from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan" (Mt 4:25). It is before this people on the move, drawn by the first healings, that Jesus goes up to teach.
The Sermon is therefore not a spiritual appendix: it stands as the very content of the Good News of the Kingdom. Before it is a moral code, it is the proclamation that God reigns and that this reign transforms the heart of whoever welcomes it.
Sermon on the Mount or Sermon on the Plain?
Saint Luke records a very similar but shorter discourse, known as the Sermon on the Plain (Lk 6:17–49). The difference is striking from the setting itself: in Matthew, Jesus "went up the mountain"; in Luke, he "came down" with the Twelve and "stood on a stretch of level ground" before speaking (Lk 6:17)[3]. Luke gives four Beatitudes followed by four woes ("woe to you who are rich…"), where Matthew lists eight. Yet the two discourses share the same skeleton: Beatitudes, love of enemies, not judging, the tree and its fruits, the house on the rock.
How to explain this double account? The traditional position comes first: the Gospel is the work of Saint Matthew, apostle and eyewitness of Jesus' ministry, and the Second Vatican Council recalls that the Gospels faithfully hand on what the Lord truly did and taught[4]. Matthew, present on the mountain, gives the discourse its full and ordered form; Luke, writing for other recipients, takes up its essentials in a briefer form. Neither invents anything: each, under the inspiration of the Spirit, orders the material according to his own design — the evangelists wrote "selecting some of the many elements that had been handed on, either orally or already in writing, making a synthesis of others, or explaining them with an eye to the situation of the churches"[5].
Part of contemporary exegesis proposes other readings: for some, it would be the same discourse, abbreviated by Luke while Matthew would have gathered there words spoken on other occasions; for others, Jesus, an itinerant preacher, would have repeated a typical teaching before different audiences — as any master repeats his themes; for still others, they would be two distinct moments. These hypotheses remain reconstructions: they rest on presuppositions concerning the composition of the Gospels — sometimes a presupposition that excludes the prophetic and the miraculous on principle —, sometimes on circular datings, and none is imposed by the Church. What is certain is historicity: behind both accounts it is truly the same Jesus who speaks, and the same doctrine that shines forth.
Jesus, the new Moses on the new Sinai
Going up the mountain: the echo of the Exodus
The simple verb "went up the mountain" (Mt 5:1) resonates, for a Jewish reader, like a quotation. That is what Moses did at Sinai: "Moses went up to God" (Exodus 19:3) to receive the Law amid fire and cloud. Matthew has already prepared this parallel: as a child, Jesus was threatened by a child-killing king (Herod as Pharaoh), he went down into Egypt and came back up, "that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled: 'Out of Egypt I have called my son'" (Mt 2:15). Here he is now on the mountain, himself giving the Law.
This parallel between the ancient Sinai and the Galilean mountain, and between the five books of Moses (the Torah) and Matthew's five discourses, is a traditional reading of the Gospel, defended by major contemporary exegetes such as W. D. Davies and Dale Allison[6]. It is debated — some find it too systematic — but the Church readily retains it because it expresses a deeper truth: Jesus is greater than Moses. Moses handed on a Law received; Jesus speaks as a sovereign lawgiver.
A New Law that fulfils the old
At once Jesus dispels any misunderstanding. He has not come to sweep away Israel's revelation:
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfil. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter, not the smallest part of a letter, will pass from the Law, until all things have taken place." — Jesus, Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5:17–18[7]
To fulfil (Greek plērōsai) does not simply mean "to observe," but to bring to fullness, to let blossom what the Law already contained in seed. The Catechism speaks of a Law whose "hidden potential" the Sermon discloses, bringing forth new demands, to the root of the heart[8]. The new righteousness must "surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees" (Mt 5:20) — not by adding prescriptions, but by an inner depth that mere outward observance cannot attain.
"He taught as one who had authority"
The effect on the audience is itself a teaching. The crowd first retains not a doctrine but a presence:
"When Jesus finished these words, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 7:28–29[9]
The scribes always quoted a prior authority ("Rabbi so-and-so said…"). Jesus says "But I say to you." This authority without external support is, between the lines, a revelation of who he is. As Benedict XVI will stress: before being a programme of action, the Sermon is "a revelation of who Jesus is," and only from there does it become a rule of life[10].
The plan of the Sermon: a charter for new life
Though seemingly overflowing, the discourse in fact follows a coherent progression: from the free gift of the Kingdom to the concrete demands of life, and from the inner life to the final decisive choice. It can be traced in seven great movements.
| Movement | Text | What Jesus gives there |
|---|---|---|
| The Beatitudes | Mt 5:3–12 | The paradoxical happiness of the poor, the meek, the peacemakers |
| Salt and light | Mt 5:13–16 | The disciple's vocation to shine |
| The fulfilment of the Law | Mt 5:17–20 | Jesus' relationship to the Torah |
| The six antitheses | Mt 5:21–48 | Righteousness of the heart, "but I say to you" |
| Righteousness in secret | Mt 6:1–18 | Almsgiving, prayer (the Lord's Prayer), fasting |
| The free heart | Mt 6:19–34 | Treasure, the eye, the Father's providence |
| Discernment | Mt 7:1–27 | Not judging, the Golden Rule, the narrow gate, the house on the rock |
The gateway: the Beatitudes
The Sermon opens with the eight Beatitudes (Mt 5:3–12), the true gateway to the Kingdom: "Blessed are the poor in spirit… Blessed are the meek… Blessed are the peacemakers…" They overturn the world's values and depict, according to the Catechism, "the face of Jesus Christ" and "portray his charity"[11]. Because they form so dense a whole, they are the subject of a dedicated article in Ignispedia: The Beatitudes. Let us note here only that they are not commandments ("do this") but declarations of blessedness: before demanding anything, Jesus announces a joy offered to the lowly.
Salt of the earth and light of the world
Immediately afterwards, Jesus gives the disciples their mission in the world through two images that have become proverbial:
"You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden… Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5:13–16[12]
Salt preserves and gives flavour; light reveals and guides. The disciple is not called to flee the world but to transform it from within. And the goal of this radiance is not his own glory but the Father's: that thread will run through all of chapter 6.
"I have not come to abolish but to fulfil"
This transition (Mt 5:17–20), already quoted above, serves as the interpretive key to all that follows. It guards against two opposite misunderstandings: thinking Jesus abolishes the Old Testament, or thinking he merely repeats it. He deepens it. The image of the "smallest letter" and "smallest part of a letter" (Mt 5:18) points to the tiniest signs of the Hebrew alphabet — the yod, the smallest letter, and the fine strokes that distinguish similar letters such as dalet and resh[13]: not even a detail of the writing will be lost from the revelation entrusted to Israel. The six antitheses that follow will be its concrete illustration: Jesus takes nothing away from the Law; he reveals its full scope.
"But I say to you": the six antitheses
The heart of chapter 5 (Mt 5:21–48) consists of six antitheses, so called because they contrast what "was said to those of ancient times" with what Jesus himself declares. The formula is constant: "You have heard that it was said… But I say to you…" Jesus does not repeal the old commandment: he unveils its deep intention and carries it beyond the act, to the desire and intention of the heart.
Beyond murder: anger and reconciliation
"You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, 'You shall not murder'… But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment" (Mt 5:21–22). Jesus traces the act back to its source: anger and contempt (calling one's brother "fool"). And he draws an unheard-of liturgical consequence: reconciliation comes before worship.
"Therefore, when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5:23–24[14]
Beyond adultery: purity of gaze
"Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:28). Again Jesus moves the boundary of sin: no longer the act alone, but inner consent to disordered desire. The images of plucking out an eye and cutting off a hand (Mt 5:29–30) are Semitic hyperbole: they convey the seriousness of the struggle for purity, not a literal mutilation.
Marriage and divorce
"Whoever divorces his wife… causes her to commit adultery" (Mt 5:31–32). Against the practice of the "certificate of divorce" tolerated by the Law of Moses, Jesus recalls the indissolubility willed by the Creator, which he will unfold later (Mt 19:3–9). The so-called clause "except for unchastity" (Mt 5:32) has generated much discussion; the Church sees in it not a permission for divorce, but the case of unions irregular from the outset.
Not swearing: transparency of speech
"But I say to you, Do not swear at all… Let your word be 'Yes, Yes' or 'No, No'" (Mt 5:34–37). The disciple must be so truthful that his plain word counts as an oath. Multiplying oaths betrays a world where lying has become the norm; the Kingdom restores transparency of language.
Renouncing revenge: turning the other cheek
"You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also" (Mt 5:38–39). The law of retaliation already limited vengeance to strict proportion; Jesus goes beyond it by renouncing retaliation. This is not a call to passivity or cowardice, but to break the spiral of evil by a surplus of inner freedom.
Loving one's enemies: "be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect"
The sixth antithesis is the summit of the whole chapter:
"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. […] Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5:44–48[15]
Love of enemies is the Christian's hallmark, what distinguishes him from mere common sense ("if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?"). And its model is God himself, whose goodness makes no distinctions. The "perfection" required is not a moral feat but a filial likeness: loving as the Father loves.
Righteousness in secret: almsgiving, prayer, fasting
Chapter 6 turns from relation to others to relation to God. Jesus takes up the three great works of Jewish piety — almsgiving, prayer, fasting — and for each contrasts the "hypocrites" who act "to be seen" with the disciple who acts "in secret." The refrain is identical: "your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Mt 6:4, 6, 18).
The three pillars of piety reinterpreted
The point is not to hide the good out of false modesty, but to purify the intention: do we do good for God or for human eyes? "When you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing" (Mt 6:3). "When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face" (Mt 6:17): let nothing show. The reward sought is no longer admiration but the Father's gaze.
The Lord's Prayer at the heart of the Sermon
At the exact centre of chapter 6, and thus of the whole Sermon, Jesus teaches prayer par excellence:
"Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…" — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:9–13[16]
The Catechism underlines this central position: "His first proclamation is summed up by St Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount. Now prayer to Our Father is at the centre of this proclamation"[17]. Tertullian already called it "the summary of the whole Gospel." Because this prayer alone deserves a full study, Ignispedia devotes a dedicated article to it: The Lord's Prayer.
Forgiving in order to be forgiven
Immediately after the prayer, Jesus pauses on just one of its petitions — forgiveness — to comment on it: "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Mt 6:14–15). Forgiveness received and forgiveness given are inseparable: one cannot hold God's mercy with one hand and close the other to one's brother.
The free heart: treasures, the eye and trust
The second half of chapter 6 (Mt 6:19–34) deals with possessions and trust. There Jesus frees the disciple from two slaveries: greed and anxiety.
"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also"
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:19–21[18]
The question is not only where we put our money but where we put our heart. Earthly treasure is eaten by moths and threatened by thieves; heavenly treasure is imperishable. The image of the eye that is "healthy" or "unhealthy" which follows (Mt 6:22–23) extends the idea: according to the quality of the inner gaze, the whole being is in light or in darkness.
No one can serve God and wealth
"No one can serve two masters… You cannot serve God and wealth." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:24[19]
Jesus personifies wealth under the Aramaic name Mammon, as a rival idol to God. He does not condemn goods as such, but serving money: making possession the master to whom one devotes one's life.
"Do not worry": the Father's providence
From this flows one of the most consoling passages of the Gospel, the call to trust over anxiety:
"Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap… yet your heavenly Father feeds them. […] Consider how the lilies of the field grow… even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. […] But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:26–33[20]
This is not praise of improvidence but a hierarchy: let the search for the Kingdom come before anxiety about tomorrow. "Sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof" (Mt 6:34): the disciple lives in the trust of a child who knows his Father is attentive.
Discernment and the narrow gate
Chapter 7 gathers a series of practical warnings on how to walk toward the Kingdom without losing the way.
Do not judge: the speck and the log
"Do not judge, so that you may not be judged… Why do you see the speck in your neighbour's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?" (Mt 7:1–5). Jesus does not abolish discernment (two verses later he will ask us to recognise false prophets), but he forbids the proud judgment that condemns a brother while remaining blind to oneself. The rule is to begin with one's own conversion.
Ask and you will receive
"Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. […] If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 7:7–11[21]
The height of the Sermon's demands could be discouraging. Jesus answers with an invitation to confident prayer of petition: what is impossible for man alone becomes possible for whoever asks it of the Father.
The Golden Rule
"In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 7:12[22]
This maxim, called the Golden Rule, sums up in one sentence the whole morality of relation to neighbour. Found in negative form in many wisdoms ("do not do to others…"), it takes in Jesus a positive and active form: not only do no harm, but do good first. And Jesus presents it as the summary of "the law and the prophets."
The two ways and the narrow gate
"Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction… For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 7:13–14[23]
The Sermon is not a vague ideal: it sets a choice before us. The image of the two ways, inherited from the Old Testament (Dt 30:15–19) and taken up by the first Christians in the Didache, recalls that Christian life is a demanding decision, made and remade each day.
"You will know them by their fruits"
"Beware of false prophets… You will know them by their fruits" (Mt 7:15–20). The criterion of discernment is neither appearance nor words but the concrete fruits of a life. "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit": consistency between professed faith and deeds is the touchstone.
"Doing the will of the Father": the house on the rock
Not saying "Lord, Lord" but doing
The Sermon culminates in a solemn warning that reveals its ultimate stake:
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 7:21[24]
The whole discourse leads here: not to knowledge, nor even to verbal devotion, but to doing the Father's will. The finest words, even miracles themselves ("did we not prophesy in your name?", Mt 7:22), are not enough if life does not conform to them.
Building on rock or on sand
The final parable seals this demand with a limpid image:
"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock… And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 7:24–27[25]
The same storm beats against both houses: trial spares no one. What decides is the foundation — that is, putting into practice. Hearing the Sermon is useless if one does not live it; the rock is loving obedience to Christ's word.
The secret of the Sermon: living by God's will
We then see that the Sermon is not a juxtaposition of precepts but a single movement: everything leads to espousing the Father's will, which the Lord's Prayer already asked for at the heart of the discourse ("your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven"). Catholic spirituality has always seen there the centre of holiness: not performing feats, but conforming one's will to God's, until one wills only what he wills. It is this union of wills that keeps the house standing when storms come, and that turns a seemingly impossible morality into a real path of happiness.
The reception of the Sermon in Tradition
Saint Augustine: "the perfect standard of the Christian life"
The great patristic commentary on the Sermon is the work of Saint Augustine, around 394, shortly after his priestly ordination: the De Sermone Domini in Monte ("Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount"), in two books[26]. From its opening, Augustine gives it its title of nobility:
"If anyone will piously and earnestly consider the sermon which our Lord Jesus Christ spoke on the mount, as we read it in the Gospel according to Matthew, I think that he will find in it, so far as regards the highest morals, a perfect standard of the Christian life." — Saint Augustine, De Sermone Domini in Monte, I, 1[27]
It is Augustine who for centuries fixes the reading of the Sermon as the rule of Christian perfection, and who links the Beatitudes to the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Saint John Chrysostom and the Greek Fathers
In the East, Saint John Chrysostom (d. 407) devotes a large part of his Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew to the Sermon: homilies 15 to 25 roughly follow its text verse by verse[28]. His reading stresses the realism of Christ's commands: far from being reserved for an elite, they are addressed to all the baptized. Before him, the Fathers had already made the mountain of the Beatitudes the place where the face of the Christian takes shape.
The Catechism: the New Law or Law of the Gospel
The Church has gathered this heritage in the Catechism, which places the Sermon at the summit of revealed morality:
"The New Law or the Law of the Gospel is the perfection here below of the divine law, natural and revealed. It is the work of Christ and is expressed particularly in the Sermon on the Mount." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1965[29]
The Catechism specifies that this New Law is above all a grace of the Holy Spirit given through faith, not a new outward code: it acts "through charity" and makes the believer a son who obeys out of love, not fear[30].
Benedict XVI: a face before a programme
In Jesus of Nazareth (2007), Benedict XVI devotes to the Sermon the fourth and longest chapter of the first volume. There he reads Jesus as the new Moses who gives the definitive Torah, but above all he warns against a purely moral reading: the Sermon is first Christological. It unveils who Jesus is — the one who speaks as an equal with the Lawgiver of Sinai — and it is from this identity that the call addressed to the disciple flows[31]. In other words, the Sermon can only be lived in communion with the one who spoke it.
Beyond Christian boundaries
The power of the Sermon has overflowed the Church. Mahatma Gandhi, for whom it was one of his decisive readings, recounted in his autobiography that the verses on non-resistance — "if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also" — had "delighted me beyond measure" and deeply nourished his doctrine of non-violence[32]. The text has inspired figures as diverse as Tolstoy and Martin Luther King. This universal fruitfulness must not make us forget that, for the Church, the Sermon is fully intelligible only when referred to the person of Christ and lived in his grace.
How to read the Sermon today?
An impossible ideal or a real path?
The objection is ancient: are these demands — not getting angry, turning the other cheek, loving enemies, being perfect as the Father — not unrealistic? Some have seen in them an ideal reserved for a few heroes, others an emergency ethic for an imminent end of the world, others still a mirror meant only to reveal our sin.
The Catholic reading rejects these reductions. The Sermon is demanding precisely because it is a grace: it describes the life the Holy Spirit makes possible for whoever lets himself be transformed. It is not first a law to be carried out by one's own strength, but a life to be received. That is why it ends with prayer ("Ask, and it will be given to you") and with confident putting into practice, not with discouragement.
A word to be put into practice
The Sermon's last word is a verb: to put into practice. The house on rock is not the one that listened best but the one that acted. Reading the Sermon on the Mount, for a Christian, is therefore not contemplating an inaccessible summit: it is hearing the daily call to let Christ remake one's heart, gesture by gesture, until willing what God wills becomes one's simplest joy.
Going further
- The Beatitudes — the gateway to the Sermon, the eight paths of happiness according to Jesus.
- The Lord's Prayer — the prayer placed at the very heart of the Sermon.
- The Synoptic Gospels — to understand the relationship between Matthew and Luke (the "Sermon on the Plain").
- The temptations of Jesus in the desert — the episode that immediately precedes the Galilean preaching.
- The baptism of Jesus — the threshold of the public ministry.
Notes and References
Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5, official liturgical translation AELF (French). Full text: https://www.aelf.org/bible/Mt/5.
1 7 12 13 14 15The Mount of Beatitudes, hill on the north-west shore of the Sea of Galilee, between Capernaum and Tabgha; frequentation of the site goes back to the Byzantine period (ruins of a small 4th-century church below; the pilgrim Egeria already mentions the site around 381 in her Itinerarium); the present Franciscan church, on an octagonal plan (the eight sides for the eight Beatitudes), was built in 1936–1938 by architect Antonio Barluzzi. Cf. "Church of the Beatitudes": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Beatitudes.
2Gospel according to Saint Luke 6:17–49, liturgical translation AELF (French): the "Sermon on the Plain." "Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place." (Lk 6:17). Text: https://www.aelf.org/bible/Lc/6.
3Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum on Divine Revelation, 18 November 1965, no. 19: historicity of the four Gospels and editorial work of the evangelists. Official text on vatican.va: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_fr.html.
4 5W. D. Davies & Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew (International Critical Commentary), vol. 1, T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1988; Dale C. Allison, The New Moses: A Matthean Typology, Fortress Press, 1993. Argued defence of the "Jesus as new Moses" typology, a traditional reading debated by part of contemporary exegesis.
6Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1968: the Lord's Sermon on the Mount, "far from abolishing or devaluing the moral prescriptions of the Old Law, releases their hidden potential and has new demands spring from them." Official text on vatican.va.
8Gospel according to Saint Matthew 7, official liturgical translation AELF (French). Full text: https://www.aelf.org/bible/Mt/7.
9 21 22 23 24 25Joseph Ratzinger – Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 1, From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, Doubleday, New York, 2007 (French ed. Flammarion, Paris, 2007), ch. 4 ("The Sermon on the Mount"), the most developed chapter of the volume: Jesus is read as the new Moses, and the Sermon as revelation of Christ's identity before being a moral programme.
10 31Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1717: "The Beatitudes depict the countenance of Jesus Christ and portray his charity." Official text on vatican.va.
11Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6, official liturgical translation AELF (French). Full text: https://www.aelf.org/bible/Mt/6.
16 18 19 20Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2763: "His first proclamation is summed up by St Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount. Now prayer to Our Father is at the centre of this proclamation." Official text on vatican.va.
17Saint Augustine, De Sermone Domini in Monte (Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount), two books, c. 393–396. Opening (I, 1): Augustine sees there, for the conduct of life, "a perfect standard of the Christian life" (Latin: perfectum vitae christianae modum). English translation on New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/16011.htm. Augustine returns to the work in his Retractationes, I, 19.
26 27Saint John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew (NPNF, series 1, vol. 10): homilies 15 to 25 roughly follow the Sermon on the Mount (homily 15 begins on Mt 5:1–2). Text on New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2001.htm.
28Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1965: "The New Law or the Law of the Gospel is the perfection here below, of the divine law, natural and revealed. It is the work of Christ and is expressed particularly in the Sermon on the Mount." Official text on vatican.va.
29Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1966: the New Law is "an interior grace of the Holy Spirit" acting through charity, not a purely outward code. Official text on vatican.va.
30Mohandas K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth, I, ch. 20 ("Acquaintance with Religions"): on Mt 5:38–40, Gandhi wrote that these verses "delighted me beyond measure" and nourished his doctrine of non-violence. Cf. also the collection What Jesus Means to Me, ch. 2.
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