Thursday in the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time, June 15, 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 with him. 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.”

““I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.”  In the verses immediately preceding today’s Gospel Reading, the Lord had shown his scorn for the Scribes and Pharisees who had substituted their interpretation of the Law for the commandments of the Law itself: “He therefore that shall break one of these least commandments, and shall so teach men shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.”  Now the Lord admonishes his followers that at the least, their righteousness should surpass that of the Scribes and Pharisees, and, with an eye to the context, that it might not be hard for them to do this.  

“Whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.”  The Greek word translated here as “is angry” also has the sense of “to provoke”, as in Whoever provokes his brother [to wrath].  More commonly, it means “to be enraged”.  The same word is used in the Lord’s Parable of the Marriage Feast, when the invited guests not only refused to attend but “laid hands on his servants and, having treated them contumeliously, put them to death”.  When the king heard what had been done, “he was angry: and sending his armies, he destroyed those murderers and burnt their city” (Matthew 22, 6-7).  And so the Lord does not mean some minor irritation, but  rage and wrath. “Whoever says to his brother, Raqa, will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna.”  Raqa is an Aramaic word that means “worthless” or “empty”.  The Lord seems to tie the prohibition against calling someone raqa or “fool” with giving way to wrath so that this too derives from the commandment against murder.

“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.”  The Lord teaches that a condition for offering a gift to the Lord is freedom from serious sin, such as that of anger against a person, for, as St. John asks, “How can he love God whom he does not see when he does not love his brother whom he does see?” (1 John 4, 20).  This reference to the altar implies that the worship in the Temple is continuing in the days when Matthew wrote his Gospel, for if he had been writing his Gospel after the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 A.D., the detail would have been irrelevant from a contemporary point of view and Matthew would hardly have included this saying of the Lord’s.

“Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him.”  The Lord speaks both of an earthly opponent and of a person’s own conscience.  That is, make peace now with all those against whom you have sinned, for time is of the essence: “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.”  The sin which is not atoned for will stand as though a plaintiff before a judge.  Likewise, a person’s conscience will accuse him of the sin.  The “judge” here is the Lord.  Finding the accused guilty, the Lord hands the sinner to the guard — an angel — who will put the person into prison: a good angel will take the sinner to purgatory if the sin was not malicious, or a wicked angel will take the sinner into hell if it was.  In purgatory, the sinner can atone for the sin that is not mortal — he can pay the last penny; but this is not true in hell, for the debt is impossibly large.