Wherever there is a bureaucracy, legal and technical language is present. Everything has to be perfectly worded, perfectly explained, perfectly organized. Any error, regardless of your intention or good-will, throws everything off.
These systems tend to disregard matters of the heart, not taking into account an individual’s opinion or an individual’s state of mind. It’s all or nothing: highly technical and impersonal.
In today’s Gospel passage Jesus challenges his disciples as he re-reads the law of their forefathers, the Old Testament. He challenges the highly legal view of the Old Testament that his contemporaries taught, especially the scribes and Pharisees. He does this by deepening the interpretation of the law, challenging his disciples to take the law into their hearts. With his teaching, Jesus does not do away with the Old Law, but makes it a matter of the heart. Jesus himself said he did not come to abolish the law. He invigorates it, he personalizes it, he makes it a law written in the heart and not in legal codes.
An example of this legalistic mindset present at Jesus’ time is the well known parable of the Good Samaritan. Due to legal and technical reasons, the priests did not stop to help the injured man lying on the side of the road. If they helped the bleeding man, they would have become ritually impure and unable to participate in the upcoming religious rites. This prevented them from responding with the heart: to help the bleeding man. Legal technicality triumphed over the heart in the parable, until of course, the Samaritan come and acted according to his heart.
Today’s Gospel passage deepens our understanding of the commandments of God. The commandments aren’t just external rules and regulations. We need to internalize them, make them our own. It’s about developing an attitude towards God that comes from the heart. It is not enough to follow the commandment “you shall not kill” but we need to internalize what that rule means: we shouldn’t even get angry with others. It is not good enough just to not commit adultery, we shouldn’t even lust after another person. It is not good enough not to make a false oath, we shouldn’t even swear.
Jesus does not want us to hide behind external and technical commandments where one may be following what is right without ever making the message his own. These commandments may be good in themselves, but there is a need to deepen our understanding of them.
For example, one may refrain from eating meat every Friday of Lent as the law says without ever grasping the reason why. It remains a rule to follow and never becomes a matter of the heart. The reason we give up meat is to unite ourselves to the sacrifice of Christ by offering a small sacrifice ourselves. Realizing this takes a commandment into the heart. It’s not just “something we do,” but there is a specific reason and a precise attitude is needed. Some remain highly technical and legal: they don’t eat meat on Friday but then feast on lobster or pig out at the parish fish fry. It’s not just about following the law, it’s about keeping it in our hearts.
The message of Jesus Christ is a message of the heart. It is about the attitude of the heart towards God, towards neighbor and towards itself.
May God give us the wisdom Saint Paul speaks so eloquently about. May we have the strength to follow the law of Christ written in our hearts and the faith to trust in his presence within us, guiding us and directing us.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In