Today's Gospel is just one of many healings that Jesus performed among the people just after the sermon on the mount. Our first reading is Isaiah 29:17-24: Blink and you. might think you are reading the Beatitudes - Matt 5 3-12, the core of that sermon. This is one of those many links that connect the Old Testament with the new - a foreshadowing of the same idea, in the OT where Jesus adds a sense of authority and 'now' ness to the message in the way he tells it. There is no sense in which we can say that the New Testament replaces the Old. Jesus himself said that he came to complete the law, not to abolish it, so we need to continue to read and try to understand the old and new testaments.
God has always insisted that the poor are blessed. Not because of their suffering, but because of the promise that they have of heavenly wealth to come. When the kingdom comes - then shall they be blessed. And the kingdom has come - the king lived and walked among is and continues to do so within all the faithful.
So we have to make the blessings flow to the poor, in every way that we have means to do so.