SUNDAY 6th (A)
Mt 5,17-37
How to harmonize the preaching and practice of Jesus with the Law of God, which for the Jews was sacred and definitive. Going beyond what is established is the radical problem that arises in all areas of life. We give absolute value to what we already know, but our knowledge will necessarily be limited; we must always go further.
It must have been very difficult for a Jew to accept that the Law was not absolute. Jesus was forceful in this. He opened a new way to relate to God. The almighty God who is in the heavens and commands, gives way to Abba, a love that identifies with each of us and invites us to discover it in others.
Every norm put into words can never be definitive. Man must always be saying what Jesus said in the gospel: you have heard what was said …, but I say to you; because we come to know better and better the nature of human beings. If Jesus had believed that the Law was of God, he would not have dared to give it its full meaning.
There is no “Law of God,” because it is not a being that has a will that imposes from the outside. Every law is a product of man. God does not communicate through external signs; the will of God is the very nature of each creature.
God’s will is nothing added to my own being, it doesn’t come to me from the outside. It is always there, but I am not capable of discovering it. This is why we have to rely on what some others have told us who were able to go down to the bottom of their being and discover what God is and what each of us is.
It’s not that God revealed his will to Moses, but that he knew how to take advantage of special circumstances to delve deeper into himself. What he discovered is God’s will, because all He wants is for us to be faithful to what we already are.
Complying with the Law is very different from what we used to think. A traffic law can be perfectly fulfilled but only in an external way. In what we call God’s Law, things don’t work like that. If I don’t discover the reason for good in what I do, it will mean nothing to me. The Pharisees were content with fulfilling the Law literally.
We still have a long way to go to overcome the idea of a Legislator God who imposes his will despite us. There are 613 precepts in the Bible. They seem infinite, but the Code of Canon Law has 1,752 canons. Jesus left us only one commandment: that you love one another, and moreover, love can never be the fruit of a law.
Jesus did not go against the Law, but beyond it. He wanted to tell us that every law is only a pointer, it always falls short. We must always go beyond the literal, until we discover the spirit that lies beyond and surpassing any formulation.
Jesus moved from an external fulfillment of laws to a discovery of the demands of his own being. That revolution that Jesus attempted is still yet to be done. All Jesus’ proposals, in the sense of living in the spirit, have been ignored. We remain more concerned with what is commanded than with discovering what we are.
Concrete proposals are examples of what we should do with all regulations. Overcoming the trap of a literal compliance and entering the Spirit. If we are not capable of going beyond the norm, we will always remain halfway.
However, laws can only be thrown away when the person has reached a deep knowledge of their own being and discovers the most authentic demands of the true self. They no longer need external supports to walk towards their goal. “Love and do what you will” or “he who loves has fulfilled the rest of the Law.”
Fray Marcos
English version translated with AI