What Stays the Same

Reflection for February 1, 2026 — The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In this Sunday’s Gospel reading, Jesus goes up the mountain to teach his disciples the beatitudes, which mark the opening of the Sermon on the Mount. Find the daily reading here.

Somewhere, there is a monk whose life is very quiet and who devotes long hours to prayer. And somewhere there is a nun, cloistered in a life of contemplation, who speaks very little except to God.



Somewhere, there is a father whose days are filled with noise, who hasn’t finished a Rosary in years because he keeps falling asleep. Somewhere there is a mother whose voice is weak with giving direction and offering counsel.

Somewhere, there is a teenage girl with much to say, but few people to listen — fewer, at least, than she would like.

Somewhere there is a woman who holds a positive pregnancy test in one hand and a phone in the other, and somewhere there is a man on the other end of that phone who waits for her to speak.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus utilizes a literary device called anaphora. Both as a reader and a writer, I love anaphora. It’s a clean, unfussy way to communicate a point. By repeating the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses, you’re basically saying the same thing over and over again, just a little bit differently each time. Those small differences tease at your audience’s brain, gently highlighting the consistencies.

Discipleship is a lot like anaphora. It’s the differences — those little aberrations from person to person, life to life — that so beautifully illustrate what remains the same across the broad spectrum of what it means to live out the Beatitudes.

Me. You. The monk. The nun. The father. The mother. The lonely girl. The man and woman who decided their own future without realizing it. How similar we all are in sin. How similar we all are in potential. How different we look to the world.

And yet, how wondrous it is that we are all offered the same hope: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in Heaven.”

©LPi