This weekend we hear the most famous “sermon” of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount. This is often quoted as the most inspirational talk that Jesus gave. The Gospel writer Matthew in a sense uses this talk as the first sermon which Jesus offered. In his Gospel Matthew uses an image of Jesus as the Great Moses and thus he has Jesus give a great talk on a mountainside. Moses delivered the Ten Commandments from a mountainside and in Matthew, Jesus delivers His Beatitudes from a mountainside. The following four weeks of readings from the Gospel of Matthew are actually a continuation of the Great Sermon on the Mount. These coming four weeks are in a various sense an explanation of the Great Sermon. Sometimes a speech which is eloquent and brief needs to be explained by many other small speeches.