Today's readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030613.cfm
Sometimes
it helps to read the Gospel verses before and after our Mass readings – it
helps to get a sense for the time and place and context of the words of the
Lord. Today’s Gospel reading, in which
Jesus upholds what we call the Old Testament - the Law and the Prophets, is
actually a part of the Sermon on the Mount.
An event where we see Jesus as the new Moses, as a new sort of lawgiver
with a new law – the law of love, of mercy, and forgiveness. Of meekness, peacefulness and purity of heart.
With commands that we are to be salt of
the earth and the light of the world.
Hearing
these new commandments, the disciples may have been a bit confused, so Our Lord
aims to set the record straight. I have
not come to abolish the law and the prophets, He tells them. No. He’s
not throwing away the law and the prophets.
Rather, He says, I have come to fulfill the law and the prophets. To fulfill.
So
the urgent question of this Gospel is – what does it mean to fulfill the law
and the prophets?
I
think the answer is this – Jesus changed the purpose of the “law and prophets” –
to the Jewish people the law and prophets were the means by which they could
approach the Father. Jesus came to be
the means by which we approach the Father.
We now have a person, rather than the law and prophets, to search for
us, find us, and lead us to His Father.
Jesus fulfills the reason God gave the law and sent the prophets in the
first place!
And
Jesus comes to turn the law from something negative and onerous and burdensome –
something to be obeyed for obedience’ sake, or out of fear – into something
beautiful and loving, and something that we want to do, something that flows
out of our hearts. From a “have to” to a
“want to.”
And
how does He do that? Out of our
relationship with Him. Our love
relationship. If we have a personal love
relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, He will place the law and the prophets
right here in our hearts. The prophet Ezekiel
beautifully foretells Christ’s fulfillment of the law with these words from
chapter 36:
I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit
I will put within you. I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart
of flesh. I will put
my spirit within you so that you may walk in my statutes, observe my
ordinances, and keep them.
He
gives us a new heart! By His grace and
flowing out of this relationship, flowing out of our desire to give ourselves
to Him fully in love, His law becomes part of us, it becomes who we are, who we
are striving to be. The more we grow to
love the Lord and desire to be like Him, then the more we grow in virtue and we
gain strength to do the right and resist temptation. There is a name for this process – it’s
called sanctification. It means that we
are growing in holiness, growing in perfection.
It’s the entire purpose for Lent.
It only happens by His grace and in His friendship.
So
let us pray during these days of Lent that the Lord will give us the grace to
invite Him into our lives in ever deeper friendship. And let us ask the Lord to plant His law deep
in our hearts so that His peace, justice, mercy, meekness and holiness will
flourish in our lives.
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