Back in the olden days, when I was in college, I was a religious brother with the Salesians of St. John Bosco and studying to be a priest. I was given an additional assignment my senior year to be an assistant to the young men in their first year in the seminary. This position meant living with them, showing them what religious life was all about, helping them with their studies, and organizing everything in their lives from work to play. Now some of these fellows were right out of high school. A few of them, though, were people who had already made a bit of a mark on the world. One was a professional banjo player who had performed on TV and in Carnegie Hall in New York City. Another, Rich Regan, was an accomplished guitarist who had worked with some well known individuals in Church music. Towards the end of the school year I attended a Catholic education convention and came upon a booth selling Church music. On one of the CD’s there was a picture of the group including Rich Regan. I said to the man behind the booth, “That’s Rich Regan. I teach him.” There was another Salesian with me, who sarcastically asked me: “You teach him what?” I quickly responded, “I teach him how to live.”
I don’t think I fully understood my own answer back then. I think there was a great deal of plastic piety involved mixed in with an abundant measure of the triumphalism that many religious orders try to generate, favorably comparing their way of life to all others.
As I get older, and reflect on the successes and failures of my life as well as the hills and valleys that lay ahead of me, I am beginning to realize that now at 63 I know far less about life than in those wonderful idealistic days of my early twenties when I had everything figured out.
This last week I was reading a commentary about life based on today’s first reading from the Book of the Wisdom of Ben Sirach. The famous Jesuit, Walter Burghardt, focused in on the phrase, Before man are life and death, whichever he chooses shall be given him. He goes on to state that to the ancient Hebrews life meant far more than the period between conception and death. Life was what proceeded from loving and obeying God. And death was not just that which followed the last breath on earth. To the ancient Hebrews, death was the rejection of the living God. “Seek the Lord and you will live,” the prophet Amos tells the people. He was not just speaking of eternity. He was speaking of living life to its fullest right now. And, conversely, isolate yourself from the love of the Lord, and you will join the living dead.
The point is that you and I are not genuinely alive because we are not medically dead. We are genuinely alive when our actions are full of love and understanding and intelligence and heart. To be genuinely alive, we must experience God. It is not enough to know about God. We must know Him, experience Him. We can only know Him and experience Him through love. The First Letter of John states, “Whoever does not love, does not know God.” We shall only be admitted into the eternal presence of God if we love Him, if we love Christ, above all else and if we love the human images of God and Christ at least as much as we love ourselves. When we consider all things through the Love of Christ, we are alive in Christ. St. Paul puts it this way, “For me, living is Christ.” Then, as Paul says in Romans Eight, nothing in creation can separate us from the Love of Christ, not even physical death. For, as we heard in today’s second reading, ‘The eye has not seen, the ear has not heard, nor has it so much as dawned on man what God has prepared for those who love him.’ Yet God has revealed this wisdom to us through the Spirit. The Spirit scrutinizes all matters, even the deep things of God.”
Perhaps all this helps us understand the Gospel for this Sunday. The Sermon on the Mount is not about does and don’ts. It is not about limitations: how little must I do to slip by St. Peter at the gates of heaven. The Sermon on the Mount is about being fully alive in Jesus Christ. It is about nourishing the eternal life within us.
The Sermon on the Mount is demanding. It is just not enough to avoid external sins of great magnitude. It is not enough to avoid murder. It is not enough to avoid adultery. It is not enough to avoid taking false oaths.
We have to fight that within us that results in murder, namely our anger, our hatred, our grudges, our past hurts. Hatred, anger, and grudges destroy the life of Christ within us. We cannot be fully alive if we treasure our hatred more than we treasure the Love of God, Jesus Christ. We have to teach our children that there is never room for hatred in the world. And yes, they may be very upset with a teacher, a playmate or a family member and this upset may be justified by someone hurting them, but if we allow upset to turn into hatred we destroy ourselves, we destroy our ability to live genuine lives, the life of Jesus within us. We cannot love God and hate another person at the same time.
We have to fight that within us that destroys the love relationships we have committed ourselves to in life, whether this be your marriages, my priesthood, the love of your families, your ability to love others. We cannot be alive to Jesus Christ if within us we have a secret desire to replace His Love, sacrificial love, with our selfishness. We cannot be alive to Jesus Christ unless we are continually fighting to protect His Love from our lust. We have to teach our adolescents and teens the difference between love and sex. We have to teach them that people who have sacrificed their lives for each other make love and grow in the Love of Jesus Christ and are fully alive. And we have to teach them that people who desire to use the bodies of others for their own selfish needs have no concept of love and are dead to the Lord.
We have to fight that which is within us that results in lying and cheating and what the Gospel calls false oaths. We cannot be alive to Jesus Christ if we are dishonest, disingenuous and hypocritical. If we live in our own false little worlds where we attempt to create reality with our lies, we will be dead to Jesus Christ. The truth sets us free to be who we are rather than who we fabricate ourselves to be. We have to teach our children that Jesus Christ is the Truth and that living in our lies results in being dead to Christ. But trusting in the truth is trusting in Jesus, even when the truth might not be pleasant such as admitting that you broke something or did something wrong.
St. Leo the Great used to challenge the Christians of the fifth century, “Remember your dignity.” We also have to remember the dignity we have, the dignity of being fully alive with the life of Jesus Christ.
“Before man are life and death, whichever he chooses shall be given him.” the first reading states, to which Jesus adds, “Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
Today we pray for the strength to be fully alive, and the grace to choose the Life of Christ.
LAW VS LOVE
Christian life involves integrity and motivation and behavior rather than mere religiosity. We are talking about the “spirit” and the “letter” of the Law.
Have you ever noticed that some of the most “religious” people can be some of the nastiest people to deal with? Similarly, some of the least “religious” people can be some of the most generous and kind people you’ve ever met. One of the current “eternal truths” being circulated on the internet is “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.”
One of the temptations of false religion is to think that obeying the rules doesn’t matter, all that matters is how we feel about God. Another temptation is to think that obeying the rules is all that matters and how we feel about God is of no importance. True religion, is in its essence, a relationship, and both how we feel and what we do flow from that relationship. People in the pew today face the temptation to emphasize one aspect of their faith or another. The antidote is to realize that we are saved not by what we do or feel, but by the openness to the love God offers us.
The Pharisees who try to trap Jesus in today’s Gospel story are people who certainly observed the letter of the law, but they just as surely missed the spirit of the law.
They had forgotten that the purpose of the Law they received through Moses was to guide them into living the Covenant with God. This particular group of Pharisees had turned into a straight jacket, and they had multiplied the laws. The Israelites originally received the law as “Good News”. They accepted it as a gift from God. Observance of the Law would lead the people to become a great nation. Over the years, those laws kept multiplying and becoming oppressive.
Jesus came not to condemn the Pharisees or the Law, but to reinstate the living relationship between God and his people. He came to rediscover the Spirit, rather than the letter of the Law. Jesus came to move our hearts to love. If they had had internet at the time, the disciples of Jesus could have written: “Dressing like a rabbi doesn’t make you a good Jew any more than vigorously washing your hands can clean a dirty heart.
The word “philanthropy” has its roots in the Greek language meaning “love for human kind.” It was never meant to apply only to donors of thousands or millions of dollars.
It is interesting that we do so much in the name of freedom, yet all too often, we have a misunderstanding of it. For some, freedom means to be able to do what we want to do, when we want to do it, and without any interference. This is far from the Christian understanding of freedom. For the Christian, freedom is usually “for something”. Primarily, freedom is for the purpose of being able to give up certain behaviors for the sake of our love of God. Many people resent being “told what to do” reasoning that God will excuse many human behaviors because: “I’m not that bad”; or, “God will understand. He lived as a human”; or, “No church is going to tell me.”
The Pharisees were not bad people. In general, they were people dedicated to make everyday life holy by attempting to bring temple practices into the home. There were lots of rituals in the temple and lots of rituals that had to be handed on through Tradition, as the only way to fulfill God’s law.
Jesus actually had no problem with that – rituals – but with the fact that such insistence on rituals led to a neglect of the practice of justice and charity. We, too, often gauge our Christianity by the frequency of our Church attendance, reception of the sacraments or participating in Parish activities. These are all very good things to “do” – and necessary – and they are means to an end. The end is what we “become”. The freedom we have is to choose or reject behavior contrary to God’s way of life and choose holiness. But we still see such a request, especially “when it comes from Rome,” as an infringement on our personal choice. The irony is that choosing God’s law should not be oppressive. It is freeing. Ignorance of the law does not mean we are free from keeping it. It is our responsibility to know what the laws are. Ignorance is no defense. Maybe that’s where there are so many lawyers.
We all continue to be tempted by the sin of the Pharisees because it looks so good!
INTERPRETING THE LAW LIKE JESUS
The Jews spoke with pride about the Law of Moses. It was the best gift they had received from God. In every synagogue, they kept it with great veneration in a special place inside a coffer. In that Law they found everything that was needed to remain faithful to God.
Jesus, however, wasn’t obsessed with the Law. He did not concentrate on
studying it or teaching it to his disciples. He was never seen preoccupied by the strict observance of the laws. Of course, he did not start a campaign against such Law, but
the laws did not take a central place in his heart.
Jesus sought the will of God from a different perspective. He saw his God trying to find his way into the hearts of humanity to make them build a more humane and just world. That would change everything else. The Law is not the deciding reference to know what God wants from us. Rather, what is most important is “to seek the kingdom of God and his justice.”
The Pharisees and the Scribes were only preoccupied with the strict observance of the laws, without any concern for love and justice. Jesus, on the other hand, wanted his disciples to be moved by a different spirit: “if your justice is not better than that of the Scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of God.” We must go beyond the legalism that is satisfied with the literal fulfilment of the laws.
When we seek the will of God with the passion with which Jesus went after, we will always go well beyond the letter of the laws. To make a more humane world the way Jesus wanted for everyone, what really matters is not making that all men fulfil every law, but that all men and women become more like Him.
He that does not kill fulfils the Law, but if he does not remove from his heart the hatred toward his brother, he is not Godlike.He that does not commit adultery abides by the Law, but if he still desires his brother’s wife, he does not like God. These people embrace the Law, but they do not follow God’s ways; they know how to keep the Law, but they don’t know how to love others; they may be free of guilt, but they will never help build a better world.
We have to listen to Jesus’ words very carefully: “I have not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil it.” I have not come to do away with the legal and religious legacy of the Old Testament. I have come to fulfil and enrich the human family, and liberate them from the dangers of legalism.
Our Christianity will be all the more evangelical and humane to the extent that we learn to keep laws, commandments, precepts and traditions the way Jesus lived them: seeking a more just and humane world as his Father wants.