Luke 6:20-28
New Catholic Bible
The Sermon on the Plain[a]
20 The Beatitudes.[b] Then, turning to his disciples, he began to speak:
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for the kingdom of God is yours.
21 Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will have your fill.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
22 “Blessed are you when people hate you and ostracize you, when they insult you and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. 23 Rejoice on that day and dance for joy, for your reward will be great in heaven. This was the way their ancestors treated the Prophets.
24 “But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
25 Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
26 Woe to you when all speak well of you,
for their ancestors treated the false prophets in the same fashion.
27 Love of Enemies.[c]“But to those of you who are listening to me, I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Luke 6:20 The remainder of ch. 6 corresponds to the “Sermon on the Mount,” which the Gospel of Matthew places at the beginning of Jesus’ activity (Mt 5–7). Luke offers a more concise and less solemn text. His readers have little knowledge of Jewish life; it was therefore pointless to contrast the old Law with the demands of the Gospel. The latter are stated in a more absolute manner. Matthew describes the interior attitude, the disposition of heart, without which no one can enter the kingdom of God. Luke prefers to evoke a more concrete and living tone. He underlines with special insistence the deportment in regard to riches; this is the test of entrance into the kingdom.
- Luke 6:20 The Beatitudes of the Gospel of Matthew bring forth an unexpected message (Mt 5:3-12). The short sentences in which Luke opposes the blessedness and woe of people reach us in an even more powerful manner. The Old Testament loved such contrasting formulas, but here the reader is directly challenged: “you.” In announcing the kingdom Jesus overturns the system of values on which we base our lives, relations, judgments, and actions. He denounces as false our more recurrent ideas. More than once, Luke underlines God’s predilection for the most deprived, who do not let themselves be deceived by pretension or by riches. Here we touch upon an essential point of a Christian conception of existence.
- Luke 6:27 Love your enemies—here is one of the most revolutionary slogans of the Gospel for each age and each existence. It is quite common to recommend solidarity with those who are near to us through family, religion, homeland, or political affiliation. Judaism, for example, insisted on love of neighbor inside the community. Jesus shatters all limits and sweeps away all objections that restrict charity. For him, the call to love others is not guided by our preferences but by the need and distress of others. The correlation of conflicts and hatred must be broken. A love that is gratuitous and without boundaries—like the love of God taught to us by Jesus—is the mark of a true disciple. The Lord himself gave us an example of such love on the cross (see Lk 23:34).
