The Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 12, 2023

Matthew 5, 17–37

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven. I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny. 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. Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors, Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow. But I say to you, do not swear at all; not by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black. Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.” 

The Gospel Reading for today’s Mass consists of twenty verses from the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount.  Each verse is worthy of a substantial discussion, but looking at these verses as a whole also rewards us for in them we can learn a lot about the One who speaks them.

The Lord has prefaced this sermon with the Beatitudes and with reaching about how his true disciples are the light of the world.  Now he launches into the deep waters of his teaching.  He prefaced this by saying, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”  Now, this runs contrary to what the Pharisees thought he was doing, and what many people today thought he did.  After all, among Christians there is no religious law for circumcision.  We also do not follow the law regarding the Sabbath with such strictness, nor do we fast as the Jews do.  But in fact, the Lord fulfilled the sign of circumcision with his teaching regarding baptism; he fulfilled the sign of the Sabbath by showing that it is a day especially set aside for us for performing good and pious works, works which “preserve life” (cf. Luke 6, 9); he fulfilled the laws of fasting by transforming the meaning of the practice, which we now do in order to imitate him.

The Lord provides specific examples of how he fulfills the sign that the Mosaic Law was.  For instance: “You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.”  Far from abolishing the law on murder, the Lord expanded it.  The sign is, “You shall not kill.”  In the days before grace, this was all a person could be expected to do, and it was hard enough.  But in the time of grace, we are to aim at perfection, and to live perfectly, as the Lord Jesus did, we must acorn and even flee from temptations to lose our tempers and to act irrationally out of anger.  Even for the baptized who practice the Faith, this is not easy, but it is possible through the grace of God won for us by Jesus Christ.  Similarly, with the expansion — or, tightening — of the other commandments, specifically, regarding adultery.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.”  Having shown the fulfillment of the commandments, showing what they really mean and how they must be kept, the Lord reveals the urgency of keeping them.  There is now no question of sinning and then going to the Temple to make a sacrifice to be made right again.  If even a lustful thought, willingly engaged in, means death just as much as actual adultery — and now we are talking about the eternal death of the soul — then it would most definitely be better to cut off a hand or gouge out an eye than to go to judgment with these sins.  Yet here the Lord speaks of the signs of procuring our safety.  That is, cutting off one’s hand signifies walking away from the object which one desires to steal, or taking one’s mind off the object and thinking of something else.  The gouging out of an eye is signifies turning one’s inner or exterior eye to another matter, and physically leaving the place of temptation.  Now, if hands and eyes did in fact cause us to sin, they ought to be dealt with physically, but they do not and so in order to prevent ourselves from sinning, we perform the actions the Lord shows us with these signs.

“But I say to you, do not swear at all.”  In ancient times, just as in modern times, vows hold society together.  But in the times before Christ, elaborate oaths in which a person might call upon thunder to strike him and his family if he failed to perform some action were quite common.  The Lord commands that his followers not engage in this sort of thing, and so vows today are more in the way of promises, sometimes with civil consequences for breaking them, as breaking the simple vow in court to tell the truth results in perjury.  Other examples of vows permissible under Christ’s law are made by parents in raising their child to be a Catholic at the time of baptism, the vows a bride and groom exchange in marriage.  There are other vows too, but they take the form of simple promises, which is what the Lord allows here.

In these verses we see the Lord Jesus far more zealous for the Law of God than the Pharisees and the scribes.  He is far more zealous than Moses and Elijah and John the Baptist.  His zeal almost runs to the fanatic.  The people hearing him were stunned and wondered if he was speaking in parables.  Their reaction would have echoed that of the members of the crowd to whom the Lord revealed that they must eat his Body and Drink his Blood to be saved: “This saying is hard; and who can hear it?” (John 6, 61), and the reaction of very many would have been the same: “After this, many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him” (John 6, 67).  He is the One who welcomes all, but with strict conditions; he is the One who dies on the Cross for us but demands obedience.  His love is “love is strong as death” but his “jealousy is cruel as the grave” — he will abide no adoration of the many false gods in our world.  

This is our God: he loves us beyond measure and to know his love, we must love him in the same way, without limit.