Jesus, «descended with the Twelve, stopped in a flat place». What in Matthew is the speech of the mountain, in Luke becomes the discourse of the plain. While in Matthew «goes up», in Luke Jesus «descends». Here are two different perspectives, but not alternatives. They must be held together in a complementarity necessary for our faith. The word of God descends towards us to raise ourselves to that perfection of love of which Luke will narrate us in the verses that follow, when Jesus will urge the disciples to be merciful as merciful is the Father. It is possible to reach this measure of love because there is a word that comes down to us, to offer us, to us who listen to it with docility and welcome it with faith, that possibility that otherwise we would not have, if we put our trust in flesh, as Jeremiah warns. The logic of the Beatitudes proclaims this attitude to us. If the man who trusts in man is cursed, blessed is the man who trusts in God, recognizing that he descends into the “plain” of our poverty, our hunger, our affliction and persecution. To found our faith in the risen Christ, so that it is not in vain, means allowing his resurrection to descend into our mortal poverty to make us rise to the new quality of his resurrected life.

Commentary by Comunità di Dumenza

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey