“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce.’”
Jesus continues in today’s Gospel passage to give examples of the Law being fulfilled. Today’s two examples are about adultery and divorce. While both examples concern human sexuality, Jesus’ teachings about these two grave sins take different approaches.
Regarding adultery, in order to show the fulfillment of God’s Law Jesus takes us within the human person. Jesus teaches us that not only outward actions can condemn. So also can inner actions of the mind and heart.
Regarding divorce, Jesus reverses Moses’ allowance of this practice. Not only does Jesus not permit divorce. He also clarifies that when a divorced person enters another relationship, adultery is the result.
Undoubtedly, both of Jesus’ examples in today’s Gospel passage seem to make following Jesus more difficult than following the letter of the Law. In our own day, there are some who find the Church’s consistent teaching that the divorced and remarried may not receive Holy Communion too difficult. Yet in the midst of all such perceived difficulties, Jesus sets us on the right road to healing from our sins and the many negative effects of our sins. For our part, we need to turn around and begin travelling in the right direction.
There is a certain fittingness or aptness to God redeeming mankind through the Incarnation and death of God the Son. St. Paul points out to the Romans that “just as through the disobedience of one man the many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one man the many will be made righteous.” God is, if you will, into fittingness, aptness, and order, so it’s no surprise that the Father would choose to redeem mankind by the death of His Son made Flesh, rather than by, say, metaphorically snapping His fingers. But He was not limited to redeeming mankind by the death of the Son of God. The Father could have used any means He wished to redeem mankind.
Yet the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist reveals to us another reason why the Father chose the death of Jesus as the means of man’s redemption. This reason is the most loving reason possible, though at first glance it might not appear so. Being human, you may recoil from God loving you this much. God chose the death of Jesus as the means of man’s redemption so that you in turn could enter fully into the saving mysteries of Christ.
By way of contrast, imagine that God had chosen to purchase man’s salvation at a different price. Imagine that God had set the price of mankind’s salvation at ten billion galaxies. Or imagine that God metaphorically snapped His fingers to release mankind from the bonds of sin and death. Or imagine that God purchased man’s salvation at the price of every drop of water in all the oceans and seas of the earth. Where would that leave you (besides awfully thirsty)? It would leave you free. It would leave you redeemed. But it would not leave you with the ability to imitate your merciful Father. It would leave you as an adopted son or daughter of a God into whose likeness you could not grow.
Can you offer ten billion galaxies to God? Can you destroy death with the snap of your fingers? Can you collect every drop of water in every ocean and sea on earth? You cannot, because all of those actions are beyond the capacity of being human. But every human being can die.
Death is our means of entrance into the saving mysteries of Christ. What could be simpler? This is why at Holy Mass we profess the mystery of faith by chanting: “When we eat this Bread and drink this Cup, we proclaim your Death, O Lord, until you come again.” This is why Jesus, at His Last Supper, willed to institute the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the way to Calvary: so that there, accepting the Body and Blood of the Lord, we might have the strength to die to our selves: our fallen selves, so as to discover our true selves.
This is not easy to do. It may be simple, but it’s not easy. Those who work in health care may have perhaps seen a person on his death bed who dies not from his disease, but from exhaustion: who expends all his energy not in living his life, but in struggling against inevitable death. Sin occupies in our moral and spiritual life much of the same struggle. We don’t want to die.
This is why Holy Mother Church compels each of her children under pain of mortal sin to participate in Holy Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation. By faithfully receiving the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we receive Jesus’ life, which gives us the strength to die: to accept death as the means to true life, or in the words of the Prayer of St. Francis, to believe truly that it is in “dying that we are born to eternal life.”
This death is a daily walk for the Christian disciple. Julius Caesar said (in the words that Shakespeare put on his lips), “Cowards die many times before their deaths. / The valiant never taste of death but once” [Julius Caesar II, 2]. But Julius Caesar, of course, was a pagan who met a gruesome death that befit a life filled with vices. The Christian who follows Jesus faithfully dies not only many times, but every day. It is this daily death, expressed within our vocation and our sacrifice of time and talent to our neighbor, that gives us hope for the hour of our death, and allows us to embrace that hour in peace. The strength to walk the Way of Christian discipleship—the Way of love that leads to eternal Love—flows through this Most Blessed Sacrament.
“But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment ….”
In yesterday’s Gospel passage, Our Lord stated that He had come not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. Beginning today, in the Gospel at weekday Mass we hear examples of Jesus fulfilling the Law.
Jesus uses a phrase today that He repeats several times throughout the fifth chapter of Matthew. The phrase “You have heard that it was said…” signals that Jesus wants to present a contrast to us. First, Jesus presents a basic teaching that comes from the Jewish Law: for example, in today’s Gospel passage, “You have heard that it was said… ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’”
Then, Jesus explains how such a teaching of the Law is to be fulfilled. He declares today: “But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment….” The rest of today’s Gospel passage is Jesus’ unpacking of His new teaching, which again, is the fulfillment of an ancient teaching from the Law.
Today, then, we strive to reflect on Jesus’ specific example of anger. What is the means by which Jesus teaches His disciples to enter into the fulfillment of this teaching? The means is reconciliation. Jesus, in the examples He cites, gives two commands: “go first and be reconciled with your brother”, and “Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him.” Meditate, then, on reconciliation with your neighbor as a form of love of neighbor, and thus as a means to the love of God.
This week we’ve begun to hear Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, from the fifth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel account. After the Beatitudes (in Monday’s Gospel) and the similes of the disciples as salt and light (in yesterday’s Gospel), Jesus today sets the framework for the teachings He’s about to offer the disciples. We could sum up this framework with these words: “I have come not to abolish [the Law] but to fulfill.”
Having said that, in the rest of today’s Gospel passage He strictly directs His disciples to integrity in their lives. There must be integrity between, as we would put it today, what they practice and what they preach. With this demand Jesus issues a warning and promise: “whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven”, while “whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”
Every Christian is, by virtue of baptism, called to be a teacher. We remember St. Francis’ admonition to “preach always, and if necessary, use words.” As each of us makes our nightly examination of conscience, we look for the integrity Jesus has asked of us, in what we’ve taught others by our actions and words.
“But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?”
Yesterday at weekday Mass we began hearing from the Sermon on the Mount, which is found in the fifth through seventh chapters of the Gospel account of Saint Matthew (5:3—7:27). In today’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls His disciples “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world”. Either of these could serve you as the basis for a long period of meditation. But consider just one aspect of what Jesus sets before you today.
Salt has long been used as a preservative of food. So one might be tempted to consider Jesus’ image of “the salt of the earth” as meaning that Christians are called to preserve life. In other words, Christians are called to preserve what we already have. But the following words of Jesus suggest something further.
Jesus speaks of salt in terms of its taste, as a seasoning. As most of us know, salt isn’t meant to be tasted by itself. Most of us would be repulsed by even the idea of putting a spoonful of salt in our mouths. But it’s common to sprinkle salt liberally on one’s food in order to bring out the taste within the food.
Here we can reflect on Jesus’ image in terms of our own discipleship. If Jesus’ disciples are “the salt of the earth”, Jesus is paying a compliment to “the earth”. There is value—taste—in the world because it was created by God. Even though the world that we live in is full of sin, our role as disciples involves bringing out what is good in God’s creation—cultivating that good—so that it might be elevated by God’s supernatural grace.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Beginning today and for many days to come, we hear at weekday Mass from the Sermon on the Mount. This sermon is one of the chief features of St. Matthew the Evangelist’s Gospel account. As such, the sermon illustrates Matthew’s portrait of Jesus: Jesus as the living fulfillment of Moses.
Moses was the prophet who led God’s People to an earthly salvation in the Old Testament: from physical slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. But Jesus effects salvation in an infinitely more profound way. So while many features of Jesus’ life and ministry echo the role of Moses, at the same time there are discrepancies between the two of them which point out how Jesus fulfills what Moses could only foreshadow.
Note in today’s Gospel passage two points of the evangelist’s “setting the stage” for the Sermon on the Mount. First, Jesus “went up the mountain”. This act is reminiscent of Moses ascending Mount Sinai to receive the Law from God. However, where Moses must receive the Word of God before teaching it to the people, Jesus is the Word of God! Jesus teaches “from the heart” of His divinity.
Second, note that “after He had sat down, His disciples came to Him.” The fact that Jesus sits down points out that Jesus is a teacher. In ancient cultures—contrary to our American experience—a teacher would sit while the students would stand.
More significant, though, is that “His disciples came to Him.” Moses had to descend the mountain in order to share with the people the Word he had received from God. Later, God declared that if anyone should even touch the mountain that he must die. Then when Moses descended to teach the people, he found that they were worshiping an idol!
But Jesus invites His disciples to join Him up on the mountain. This contrast to Moses suggests that Jesus will teach in His great sermon something profoundly interior. He wants His disciples to join Him on the mountain, symbolizing that He is inviting them to climb: that is, to transcend everything that is of the earth. So Jesus invites us today to ascend to the Word of God, and through His words, closer to the heart of the Father’s divine life.
“… but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.”
We live in a society where values contrary to the Gospel are canonized. A person’s value is measured in economic terms. The poor are shunned as worthless.
God has a different set of values from those of our society. When Jesus saw the wealthy putting large amounts of money into the collection box of the Temple, He was not impressed. It was not as if the wealthy should not have given large sums, but Jesus was looking for something else. He saw that something else in the poor widow who donated only two small copper coins. He explains to us what He saw: “[The wealthy] have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.”
It was the generosity of the widow that mattered, not the amount that she gave. We are called to be generous people, unselfish in all our relationships with others. God does not value us for giving our money; or, for that matter, for giving our time and talent. God values us for the generosity from which our giving flows. Generosity flows from the love that we receive in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.
Today’s Gospel Reading is as unusual as it is brief. The unusual nature of this passage of only three verses (or four sentences) is highlighted by the evangelist’s concluding observation that the “great crowd heard this with delight”. What is it about Jesus’ words that delights them?
We have a clue to Jesus’ aim in His initial question: “How do the scribes claim that the Christ is the son of David?” Jesus’ subsequent words, then, seem a rebuke of the scribes. Likely, the members of the crowd were not fans of the scribes, so that Jesus’ rebuke allows the crowd to delight in what they wished they themselves could do.
But Jesus never rebukes without wanting those rebuked to turn instead to the Truth. Consider the content of Jesus’ rebuke. Jesus is rebuking what the scribes claim about the Christ. We know from the entire context of the Gospel that this claim is one basis by which Jewish leaders would put Jesus to death. Jesus indeed is the Christ. Jesus is the only begotten Son of God.
The delight of the crowd, then, is like the cheers of “Hosanna!” on Palm Sunday. The crowd’s delight will be short-lived if this Christ who delights them today is tried tomorrow as a criminal. Perhaps, however, the rebuke that Jesus issues today would ultimately bear fruit in the conversion of a scribe towards faith in the Word made flesh.
CCC 202, 232-260, 684, 732: the mystery of the Trinity CCC 249, 813, 950, 1077-1109, 2845: the Trinity in the Church and her liturgy CCC 2655, 2664-2672: the Trinity and prayer CCC 2205: the family as an image of the Trinity
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A well-written biography fascinates. The narrative of a subject’s life—the events surrounding the person, as well as the choices which the person makes amidst those events—captures the imagination. The individual person’s choices are windows into the person’s inner life: the person’s mind, heart and soul.
Something similar is true regarding the Most Blessed Trinity. Theologians describe the Trinity by means of two different terms. One is called the “economic Trinity”. The word “economic” refers in this case not to money, but to works performed, as in the phrase “home economics”. So the “economic Trinity” is the Blessed Trinity described in terms of works performed “outside” the Trinity.
In other words, the “economy” of the Trinity is those works that the Trinity never had to carry out, but nevertheless freely chose to carry out. The Trinity did so simply out of love. These works chiefly fall into two groups: creation and salvation. The work of creation concerns every created thing in the universe, visible and invisible. The work of salvation solely concerns mankind.
The Trinity’s works of creation and salvation both serve as windows into the inner life of the Trinity. This inner life is called the “immanent Trinity”. This inner life of God is the very essence of the Trinity. While the works of the “economic Trinity” are “exterior” to God, and therefore never had to be carried out, the “immanent Trinity” is God’s essential Being in eternity: as He was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.
On this Sunday’s Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, we can reflect on God’s works of creation and salvation as a way to peer into His inner life as the Trinity. It’s fitting that the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity on the Sunday after Pentecost. The two solemnities stand in a certain contrast to each other. Pentecost celebrates the culmination of the Trinity’s “economy of salvation”, while the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity peers into the inner life of the “immanent Trinity”. Consider further the connection between the “economic Trinity” and the “immanent Trinity”, and how the former illuminates the latter.
The beauty of creation inspires poets and mountain climbers, biologists and physicists to see the works of creation in a transcendent way. In other words, the beauty of the works of creation point our attention to “where” they came from. For believers, this reflective act of transcendence leads beyond those particular works, and also beyond the “how” of creation, all the way back to God.
Chief among the visible works of God’s creation is the human being. It’s little wonder that first-time parents draw closer to God as they stand in awe at the innocence, beauty and dignity of a single, tiny human life. Throughout the Church’s history, the greatest teachers of the Catholic Faith have reflected on how man—male and female—is created in the image of God. This image is seen especially in how man’s intellect and will operate. Although every animal has an intellect and a will, allowing it to reason and make choices, the human intellect and will are different because they are capable of self-transcendence. The human intellect can map the cosmos and the human will can construct an edifice to last a millennium.
Yet while the works of creation reveal God’s inner life in a myriad of ways, the Trinity’s work of salvation does so even more powerfully. In the order of salvation history, this work includes both redemption and sanctification.
In the fullness of time God revealed Himself as a Trinity of Persons when He established His new and everlasting Covenant through the Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. In this singular act of self-sacrifice—which Jesus offered fully through His human intellect and will, which is to say, knowingly and freely—Jesus gave up His divine and human life for the sake of His Bride, the Church. Nonetheless, the Sacrifice of the Cross is not only the work of God the Son. It is a Trinitarian sacrifice, made at the initiative of God the Father and through the Power of God the Holy Spirit, who is the love of the Father and the Son for each other.
Reflections on the Sacred Liturgy 