Friday in the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time, June 10, 2022

Matthew 5:27-32

Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna. It was also said, Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce. But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

“But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  The Lord Jesus is both giving a particular commandment and also explaining what true holiness consists of; the love of God and neighbor.  For one who loves God and neighbor, there is no place for impure thoughts.  And for one dedicated to the will of God, it would be better to cut out an eye or lose a hand than to offend him.

I believe the following verse from Malachi is the source for the otherwise odd question the Pharisees pose to Jesus about divorce: “Take heed to yourselves, and let none be faithless to the wife of his youth. For I hate divorce, says the Lord the God of Israel” (Malachi 2, 15–16).  The Hebrew translated here as “divorce” is, in fact, “sending away”, the term the Old Law uses for divorce.  The Lord Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, confirms what the Father had said through the Prophet, and thus stakes out a position in what evidently was a matter of great debate at the time.  Malachi, who lived in the 400’s B.C., was the last of the Old Testament Prophets and, as such, his book had special meaning.  Even though what is written in it seems to contradict the Mosaic law about divorce, the Pharisees would have been slow to reject it entirely.  Actually, no contradiction exists: God hates divorce but he permits it up until the time of his Son’s teaching.