Friday in the First Week of Advent, March 3, 2023

Matthew 5, 20-26

Jesus said to his disciples: “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into 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.”

The Holy Church concludes the Gospel Readings for the first weekdays of Lent with this exhortation to righteousness.  Thus, in an orderly way, the Lord teaches us of the necessity for our salvation to give alms and to fast as a preparation for the equally necessary work of praying, which he commands us to do.  In the present Reading, the Lord warns us to surpass the righteousness even of the Pharisees.

Now, the Pharisees had begun as a group which set itself apart from the other Jews in order to practice the strictest possible righteousness.  To this end, they adopted and then tried to enforce on others the purity laws which the Temple priests had to follow.  In this they went way beyond what the Law actually called for, and they wound up obsessing over washings and rituals to the detriment of their worship of God through good works, as proclaimed of the just man in Psalm 112, 9 for instance: “He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever.”  The Lord, in saying, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven”, announces that the Pharisaic project has failed.  It failed because it centered itself not on God but on what St. Paul called “works” — mindlessly following instructions without looking up to the One who gave them.  The Lord does not condemn the works themselves, for he said to the Pharisees, “Woe to you . . . hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.”  We might ask how they could have lost sight of the God whom they seemed to serve.  St. Paul has the answer: “Israel . . . pursued the righteousness which is based on the Law did not succeed in fulfilling that Law. Why? Because they did not pursue it through faith, but as if it were based on works” (Romans 9, 31-32).  The Pharisees put all their trust for their salvation in their exact performance of the commandments of the Law — and of their own customs, rather than in faith in God.  But the Lord taught that works of charity done out of love for God — through faith — is what makes a person righteous.  It is another way in which we are taught that if we rely on ourselves we shall fail, but if we have faith in Almighty God, we shall gain life.

“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.”  The Lord teaches this as an example of what he means.  It is not obedience of the law regarding murder that justifies, for every society forbids this; but it is obeying the prohibition against rage in the heart that makes a person righteous.  It is not the outward act but the inward movement of the heart that manifests in the exterior act (or, in this case, rejection of acting) that justifies.  Another way to look at this is that an adult may be baptized by the pope on Easter Sunday in St. Peter’s Basilica, but if that adult does not renounced sin in his heart, grace does not transform him into an adopted child of God.  The person merely simulates receiving the sacrament.  The heart must conform with the will of God in order to be made righteous.  We see this clearly when the Lord describes a person going to offer sacrifice: “Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar.”  (Incidentally, the inclusion by St. Matthew of this quote about the altar reveals to us that he wrote his Gospel before the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. and certainly before the Jewish rebellion that began in 66 A.D.). 

“Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.”  The Lord here refers to a state in the afterlife in which “the last penny” may be paid.  We call this state “Purgatory”.  The Lord makes no enormous revelation here for traces of the doctrine already existed in popular Jewish books of the day, such as The Book of Enoch.

And so we give alms and fast so that we might pray and our prayers be heard, the chief of which ought to be that we grow in faith and in the good works that spring from faith for the greater glory of Almighty God.