3 March 2023 – Matthew 5:20-26
Today’s readings are about repentance for the wrongs we have done and the assurance of God’s mercy. The Gospel passage is part of the Sermon on the Mount, and presents the first of six so-called ‘antitheses’ in which Jesus contrasts the demands of the Law with those of the Gospel.
Virtue for the scribes and Pharisees was largely measured by the external observance of the Law.
For Jesus this is not enough, for him true virtue is in the heart. As with the commandment not to kill, Jesus says that hatred, anger and violence (often expressed in abusive language and actions) are also to be avoided because they too kill people, albeit in a different way. Moreover, we cannot have a good relationship with God and, at the same time, a bad one with people.
Jesus wants to make justice complete with the invitation not to stop only at the formal application of rules. The principle of balance, of doing no evil, is not enough. The real added value is to consider the other a brother, always and in any case, someone with whom one has a deep relationship, someone who is not a minus habens; therefore, even cataloguing and judging become unjust actions because one arrogates to oneself a right that is not ours. Cataloguing and judging become ways in which relationship is denied: this is why Jesus is so severe in condemning such attitudes.
The emphasis is placed on relationship as something to be safeguarded at any cost: one cannot have a more sacred relationship with the Lord if one has not first rebuilt the relationship with those one has something against. So it really means that for Jesus the mode of relationship with the other uniquely indicates the mode of relationship with God: only by holding both dimensions – indeed, by finding in the human one the signs of the divine one – can one enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
For good workers…
– One of the points on which Matthew’s Gospel insists most is reconciliation. This indicates that in the communities of that time, there were many tensions between radical groups with different and even opposing tendencies. No one wanted to give way before the other. Matthew illuminates this situation with Jesus’ words on reconciliation, for which acceptance and understanding are necessary. Seek reconciliation before it is too late!
– Even the saints affirm and confirm by their testimony that life is a journey of reconciliation with God and others.
– It does not matter whether one is wrong or right: if one does not get along with one’s brothers, one is not a child of God. The reality of being children of God is necessarily manifested in living as brothers in Christ.
P JOBY KAVUNGAL RCJ