Homilies from St. Anthony, Allston, MA

Living the Law to the Fullest

There is an important understanding when we are reading the Sermon on the Mount. If we do not embrace it, we will never comprehend what Jesus is saying.

It is easy to look at these words as a list of rules that one must now follow, however, if you do this you miss the point.

What Jesus is doing is defining for us who we are so that we can understand what we will become.

So, let us look at some of what He says here.

First Jesus says that unless your righteousness surpasses the scribes and pharisees you will not enter the kingdom of God. What does that mean?

Remember, the scribes and the pharisees worked through the law. They understood the letter of the law, in fact that is what a scribe is, someone who understands the letter of the law. However, Jesus is calling us to understanding the same law deeper than the letter.

To understand the law deeper than the letter, you need to understand the meaning of the law and live by that meaning.

You can see this by the examples he gives.

The admonition against anger is greatly misunderstood. Many believe that anger is a sin in itself. That is not true. Anger is an emotion and all humans have experiences of anger. What Jesus is saying is do not let your anger consume you where take you upon yourself the authority that is not yours and bring your wrath against another as if you were a god. God alone has that authority, do not try to take it upon yourself or you will be destroyed by it. You may disagree with someone, you may even recognize someone cannot exist in your life peacefully, but you don’t have the authority to dehumanize or to destroy someone. We must see all people as God sees them, or we are not going to follow the law.

So the law focuses you on the jot or the tittle, but Jesus is calling us to see its truer meaning. This means the letter of the law still holds, but that is at best a minimum standard.

 

Let us look at this from another perspective.

Let us look at the law to attend Mass on Sunday.

The rule says that we must live up to the meaning of the third commandment and keep holy the Lord’s day.

So, we must go to Church every Sunday. Some misunderstand Jesus teaching and say we do not have to follow the rule, we do not have to go to Mass every Sunday. Well yes we do.

However, the reason to go to Mass is because we are children of God and we find our deepest meaning by being in communion with God so that we may live as his agents, his prophets and his children during the week. So, in order to truly live as his children, we must obey him so that we may receive fully in this life and in the life to come everything he chooses to bestow on us. That is a lot more than the rule that says we have to go to Church on Sunday.

This is what Jesus is teaching. Embrace the reason for the law not the letter of the law.

Now he says that not one aspect of the law will be eliminated so that law applies. However, he wants us to live the deepest level of the law. Let us change his words  from the law of God to the law of physics but use the same words.

Jesus will not change one aspect one iota of the law of physics. Indeed, none of us really have any ability to disobey the law of physics. However, we can do anything we need to do within the law of physics but we cannot disobey the laws of physics.

Obeying the law, exploring it to its fullness as we understand it, we are working on sending people to Mars one day. Even if we accomplish this task, and even having

accomplished sending vehicles to Mars that send back live video of that planet from its surface, we never once disobeyed the law of physics.

This is what Jesus is telling us to do spiritually. Know the law of God and do not just focus on obeying the surface superficial aspect of it. Discover its meaning and live it to the fullness of its reality.

The law of God is based on two laws: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.

So what Jesus is telling you to do is to live those laws to the fullest of their existence and by doing that you will come to the fullness of humanity and see others as God sees them.

This is what he calls us to do. To embrace the deepest origin of the law and live by it.

This means to see even our worst enemy as a child of God whom God loves more than you and I can imagine. You have no right to take any wrath upon them because vengeance belongs to God for your enemy is God’s creation. You can correct them and even if need be ignore them, but you cannot seek to dehumanize them, for if you do then you are disobeying the law and you have put yourself outside the Kingdom of God.

Obeying the law, exploring it to its fullness as we understand it, we are working on sending people to Mars one day. Even if we accomplish this task, and even having accomplished sending vehicles to Mars that send back live video of that planet from its surface, we never once disobeyed the law of physics.

This is what Jesus is telling us to do spiritually. Know the law of God and do not just focus on obeying the surface superficial aspect of it. Discover its meaning and live it to the fullness of its reality.

The law of God is based on two laws: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.

So what Jesus is telling you to do is to live those laws to the fullest of their existence and by doing that you will come to the fullness of humanity and see others as God sees them.

This is what he calls us to do. To embrace the deepest origin of the law and live by it.

from St. Anthony Parish, Allston, MA

Also check out Writings from the Catholic Abbey to the Secular World

Following The Master

One of the first short stories I ever wrote was called Elysium and it was about a man’s struggle with his life while in a restaurant somewhere near Barstow, California. I sent it in to a literary magazine and as I like to say: it bounced back. Obviously, I was too new at writing.

However, the editor who returned it kindly wrote on the manuscript the suggestion for me to read “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway. It is a wonderful story about an old man who comes to a bar every night and frustrates one of the waiters who has to go home late because of him.

The editors message was simple: “If you are seriously thinking of writing then look at your story and study this writer’s take on your focus.”

Why tell this story?

The editor was telling me to know the masters to learn to write.

If you look at the readings for today you will notice an interesting line in the second reading from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians.

For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified . . . so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

Our faith is rooted in one thing, our union with Jesus Christ and nothing else. Not even the teachings or authority of the bishops or even the pope is a substitution for our union with Jesus Christ. The role of the bishops is actually to help us discern this union not to substitute for it.

Everything begins and ends there and so what we do and how we live is based on that union.

The message of the Church is always to deepen our union with Him and to conform our lives to Jesus Christ. That is the point of all that we do. Everything. That is what gives meaning and focus on our life. Doing that, exactly that.

 

In fact, I get somewhat frustrated by those who go about teaching what they call Christian morality without teaching friendship with Christ first. Morality is important but it must be rooted in our union with Christ or our morality does not make sense.

Therefore, we are not called to be good, but instead to be good as our union with Jesus defines us to be.

We are not called to be kind, but to be kind as our union with Jesus teaches us

We are not called to be courageous, but courageous as our union with Jesus teaches us to be.

So you see it is that union that becomes the standard of our morality just as the editor was teaching me that “A Clean Well Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway should be my standard of writing about esoteric scenes in a bar on the meaning of life.

A morality that is not rooted in Christ is an untethered morality. People may complain about how our values changed in this country especially over the past twenty years. That is true, but why have they changed? Because our morality became untethered. It is a morality based on human wisdom. That is the second part of St. Paul’s teaching.

Notice what he says: “so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.”

That is also the reason why we must root our morality in our union with Christ.  

When the founder of a successful company dies what is the first question people ask about the person who takes his place: “How much is he like the founder?”

What was the first thing people asked about Tim Cook when he took over as Steve Jobs was in his final days of pancreatic cancer: “How much is he like Steve Jobs?”

They were not interested in whether he was an effective CEO, they were interested in whether he was like the CEO they cared about the most: Steve Jobs.

The question is not whether we are seeking to be good people, it is whether we are the most Christ-like.

How do we become Christlike—by knowing Christ. Remember the old definition of our reason for existence: We are called to know, love and serve Christ in this life and the next.

Word order meant a lot in the Catechism of the Catholic Church under Trent. What is the first word of the three there: Know Christ.

We cannot live our vocations and baptismal promises if we do not first know Christ. In fact, I think that is what has happened to our Church—there has been a focus on doing good things but that focus has been untethered from a union with Christ. So we have focused on doing good things but not through the lens of a union with Christ.

This is why devotion, the quest for holiness and growth in discipleship is so important. It is that we may become like Christ. That is what holiness is: living our union with Christ. It is not defined in piety, but rather in being Christ like to which piety is an avenue.

The more we grow closer to Christ, the more we grow closer to understanding divine wisdom. The divide between divine wisdom and human wisdom is great. It is not that divine wisdom is separate from human wisdom but it is greater and all consuming.

There is a fascinating passage in “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” in which the old waiter goes to a bar after work. He has no one at home waiting for him and he has no faith. It takes place, by the way, in Spain. He prays “Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name.” The man has no one to know him and he has no faith. This is where untethered morality leads us to nada. Rooting ourselves in our union with Christ leads us to Christ and the fullness of humanity to which we are called. This is the point of our existence: be rooted in Christ and let that define us.

Your are also invited to the online Catholic publication:  Writings from the Catholic Abbey to the Secular World from Medium