Word to the Wise
Wednesday, June 14, 2023 - Wednesday in the 10th Week in Ordinary Time
[2 Cor 3:4-11 and Matt 5:17-19]"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. [Matthew]
The Gospel According to Matthew was written for a Jewish Christian community. "Jewish Christian" may seem at first glance to be a contradiction in terms, but it describes the situation of many Jews at the time of the composition of this gospel who accepted Jesus' teaching and regarded him as the Messiah. The Mosaic law was their way of life. What did belief in Jesus mean for that way of life? Clearly they were meeting resistance from their brothers and sisters in the synagogues. The Gospel According to Matthew was written as a way of helping them to make sense of their situation.
Jesus, in the Gospel According to Matthew, is not only a "new Moses" but is also portrayed as the whole point of God's plan of salvation for the Chosen People. He is the fulfillment of the whole purpose of God for history and the world! His teaching of the Kingdom of God is in continuity with the law and the prophets, but his emphasis on the love of God and neighbor as primary means that the rest of the 613 precepts of the Mosaic law had to be read and observed in the light of the two greatest commandments. The Sermon on the Mount goes beyond physical and external observance to the very heart and mind of the believing person.
Faithful Jews could continue to observe the precepts of the law in daily life, but these would be transformed by faith in Jesus. St Paul's conversion would mark a kind of dividing line between the Mosaic observances and Gentile converts. What had to be central is faith in Jesus and not simply punctilious repetition of observances. We Catholics have had our own struggles with over-legalistic interpretation and enforcement of liturgical and canonical precepts in order to maintain the appearance of unity and uniformity. A line from the Gospel According to Luke may help us here: "Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside?" [Luke 11:40] AMEN