The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today celebrate the statutes and ordinances given by God and challenge us to be with Jesus in fulfilling the Law.
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| Statutes and ordinances |
Moses commands obedience and cites the advantages of fidelity in the reading from the Book of Deuteronomy.
And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?1
Psalm 147 exhorts the holy city to recognize it has been re-created and made the place of disclosure for God’s word.
* [Psalm 147] The hymn is divided into three sections by the calls to praise in Ps 147:1, 7, 12. The first section praises the powerful creator who restores exiled Judah (Ps 147:1–6); the second section, the creator who provides food to animals and human beings; the third and climactic section exhorts the holy city to recognize it has been re-created and made the place of disclosure for God’s word, a word as life-giving as water.2
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus declares he is to fulfill the Law and the Prophets.
* [5:17–20] This statement of Jesus’ position concerning the Mosaic law is composed of traditional material from Matthew’s sermon documentation (see note on Mt 5:1–7:29), other Q material (cf. Mt 18; Lk 16:17), and the evangelist’s own editorial touches. To fulfill the law appears at first to mean a literal enforcement of the law in the least detail: until heaven and earth pass away nothing of the law will pass (Mt 5:18). Yet the “passing away” of heaven and earth is not necessarily the end of the world understood, as in much apocalyptic literature, as the dissolution of the existing universe. The “turning of the ages” comes with the apocalyptic event of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and those to whom this gospel is addressed are living in the new and final age, prophesied by Isaiah as the time of “new heavens and a new earth” (Is 65:17; 66:22). Meanwhile, during Jesus’ ministry when the kingdom is already breaking in, his mission remains within the framework of the law, though with significant anticipation of the age to come, as the following antitheses (Mt 5:21–48) show.3
Ronald Fussell asks how do we express your faith? One expression of faith might be the orthodoxy with which we keep the laws and commandments. Surely, we have encountered many who strive for greater fidelity to these laws of our faith. For some, a measure of one’s Catholicity might be the extent to which these laws are followed. But, focusing on the laws and commandments alone without also focusing on Jesus’s guidance to “love your neighbor as yourself” leads to a hollow faith that deprives us of the relationships that are so crucial to who we are as Christians.
So, in this Lenten season, my hope is that today’s Gospel passage confirms not only the importance of our laws and commandments, but also those most important commandments – to love the Lord our God, and to love others as we love ourselves. I pray that you and I will continue to be challenged during this season of renewal to examine how we apply the laws of our faith in service to others with great love, even when it is most difficult, so that we may build up His Kingdom here on Earth.4
Don Schwager quotes “Making daily progress towards God,” by Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D.
"As Christians, our task is to make daily progress toward God. Our pilgrimage on earth is a school in which God is the only teacher, and it demands good students, not ones who play truant. In this school we learn something every day. We learn something from the commandments, something from examples, and something from Sacraments. These things are remedies for our wounds and materials for our studies." (excerpt from Sermon 16A,1)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Matthew 5:17-19 asks so just how does Jesus fulfill the Law of the Old Testament? Today’s first reading gives us a clue. Moses reminds the Israelites that even though the Law blesses them with God’s wisdom, what really sets them apart is how close God is to them: “What great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us?” (Deuteronomy 4:7). That closeness is the key. Yes, God wants his people to know his thoughts; but even more, he wants them to know his heart.
Jesus shows us that the heart of the Law is loving God and our neighbor. He shows us that true obedience goes beyond a matter of “thou shalt not.” He comes close to each of us to show us what it looks like. That’s how he came to fulfill the Law.
“Jesus, thank you for patiently teaching me how to love.”6
Friar Jude Winkler explains the blessing to the Israelites of knowing exactly what God meant in contrast to the capricious nature of the gods of their neighbours. The fulfillment of the Law for Jesus and his disciples is attention to the smallest part in a different way than the scrupulosity of the Pharisees. Friar Jude mentions that historically after The Jewish Synod of Jamnia, Christians from Jewish heritage became outnumbered by people who were Gentiles.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, comments that the word “mysticism” simply means experiential knowledge of spiritual things, as opposed to book knowledge, second hand knowledge, or even church knowledge. Admittedly, personal experiences are easy to misinterpret, and we shouldn’t universalize from our “moment” to an expectation that everybody must have the same kind of “moment.” We also can’t assume that any experience is 100 percent from God. We must develop filters to clear away our own agenda and ego. Nothing beats a solid understanding of some theology, psychology, and sociology, along with good and wise counsel. We cannot forget Paul’s reminder which was meant to keep us humble: “We know imperfectly and we prophesy imperfectly” (1 Corinthians 13:9).
Most of organized religion, without meaning to, has actually discouraged us from taking the mystical path by telling us almost exclusively to trust outer authority—in the form of Scripture, tradition, or various kinds of experts—instead of telling us the value and importance of inner experience. (I call that trusting the “containers” instead of the “contents.”) In fact, most of us were strongly warned against ever trusting ourselves, told that our personal experiences of the divine were unnecessary and possibly even dangerous.
Discouraging or denying people’s actual experiences of God often created passive people and, more sadly, a lot of people who concluded that there was no God to be experienced! We were taught to mistrust our own souls—and thus the Holy Spirit within us. We can contrast that with Jesus’ common phrase, “Go in peace, your faith has made you whole!” (as in Mark 5:34 and Luke 17:19). He said this to people who had made no dogmatic affirmations, did not think he was “God,” did not pass any moral checklist, and often did not belong to the “correct” group. They were simply people who trustfully affirmed, with open hearts, the grace of their own hungry experience—in that moment—and that God could care about it.7
Our relationship with Jesus brings personal experience that through the counsel of the Spirit aids in our living the fulfillment of the Law.
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