6th Sunday Year A 2023

 

6^th. Sunday of Year (A)

(Sirach 15:15-20; 1^st. Corinthians 2:6-10); Matthew 5:17-37)

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We should be eternally grateful for the gift of the Faith which we have received, dear People of God, because it is the very wisdom of God, a wisdom which can lead us to that heavenly glory for which the Father chose us in Jesus, His beloved, only-begotten-Son, and Our Lord and Saviour:

 I have revealed Your Name to those whom You gave Me out of the world. They belonged to You and You gave them to Me and they have kept Your word.  (John 17:6) 

This God-given wisdom, this keeping of His word revealed to us in and by Jesus, is not something the Pharisees and Scribes, the Temple hierarchy and their officials, appreciated in His days on earth, for they were most diligent in their endeavours to entrap Jesus in His speech that they might crucify Him all the more quickly.  Consequently, we are not surprised that in our modern world -- every bit as ‘evil and adulterous’ as Judea in Jesus’ days -- the ‘woke’, moralists, demagogues with neither authority nor science; and the ‘pure’ scientists, with no appreciation of the fulness of human nature yet scanning planets over limitless distances for the slightest traces of possible human life, while  refusing to recognize the face of God in the beautiful universe He created, all laugh at us too:

         If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but you do not belong             to the world now that I have chosen you out of the world, and for that reason the             world hates you.    (John 15:19) 

Such opposition and disregard, however, actually serve to deepen our bond with Jesus:

           Remember what I said: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will also keep yours.   And they will do all these things to you on account of My name, because they do not know the One who sent Me.  (John 15:20-21) 

Our gratitude and confidence, however, must never slide into complacency or pride, because we are taught that no one can become truly wise without having a reverential fear of the Lord, as you heard in our first reading:

            The eyes of God are on those who fear Him; to none does He give license to sin.

Reverential fear of the Lord is the root of wisdom and the anchor of faith.  Faith, however, calls for more than the obedience required by reverential fear; it calls for some initial appreciation of, and commitment to, the supreme beauty and  sublimity of God in Himself; it evokes heart-felt gratitude for His great goodness to us now in this present life, and an all-transcending hope for His sublime plans/promises for our eternal future. Such faith, dear People of God, can, and is intended to, gradually nurture in us -- even here on earth -- a heart-warming  foretaste of God’s supporting love and understanding, before leading us to its ultimate fulfilment by our sharing, as adopted children of God, in Jesus’ Own heavenly beatitude of eternal life and love.

And yet, because the worldly and the ‘woke’ loathe obedience in the intimate details of their lives, and want to choose for themselves from the many and varied pleasures of pride and sensuality, or to rejoice in a pseudo personal awareness of moral superiority over others around them, they all love to ridicule religious faith and deny the existence or relevance of any God.

For our part, however, we who come to worship with full intent and quiet sincerity, praise the God we desire to know and love better; we long to walk the way His word traces out for us; aspiring to love with our whole being -- mind and body, heart and soul -- Him Whom we know gave His only-begotten Son for love of us, and Who has, St. Paul assures in our second reading:

         Prepared for those who love Him, (blessings) no eye has seen, no ear has heard,             no mind conceived. (1 Corinthians 2:9) 

We come, as the psalmist says, prepared to ‘sow in tears’, if need be, so that we might reap a personal share in the Divine love and fellowship which is eternal.

 Our Gospel reading today is difficult to fully understand because it comes to us from St. Matthew’s evangelisation of his own Church congregation of former Jewish believers and synagogue worshippers, and consequently it refers to  issues at the back of their minds which are not part of our make-up.  For that reason, today we can only follow the chief ‘headlines’, so to speak, of Jesus’ words in the Gospel; and, as if to prepare His disciples and us for what He was about to say, Jesus began by saying: 

         Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to             abolish, but to fulfil. 

Therefore, His disciples would need to be very careful in their understanding and observance of the Law’s commands, as He went on to say:

         Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will               not enter the kingdom of heaven. 

Jesus, did not want cold, meticulous, literal observance of laws written in letters of carved stone, but an obedience such as I earlier described as needed for our Catholic Faith-life.  He therefore went on to make clear His own deeper appreciation and understanding of the Law of Moses on certain most serious issues.

         You have heard it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’, 

Jesus went on to give them His own fuller appreciation of this understanding of the commandment by explaining that God’s refusal to allow anyone to rob a man of his life by murder, also implied and required that no one should rob him of his reputation either, by mordent, bitter words and lies meant to harm and to hurt. 

 He next spoke expressly and most emphatically against sexual infidelity and divorce:

              You shall not commit adultery.

Here He both deepened and elevated the issue by, on the one hand going on to speak of lust of the eyes supplying for physical adultery; while, on the other hand, speaking of divorce as a procedure incurring the danger and the charge of causing a rejected wife to commit adultery.  Moreover, those who went along with divorce by marrying any such divorcee would be themselves committing adultery.

Against taking oaths, He speaks in our sense of using the Lord’s name in vain, and urged simplicity and humility when speaking:

         Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes’, and your ‘No’ mean ‘No’.  Anything more is from the             evil one. 

Jesus knew Himself as having been most definitely sent to fulfil the Law; and so sure was He of the validity of the Law that He solemnly declared:

         Amen I say to you: until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the         smallest part of a letter, will pass from the Law until all things have taken place. 

Therefore when, speaking of the Law and current Jewish practices, although several times He went on to add:

             You have heard that it was said to your ancestors …. But I say to you; 

Jesus was in no way abolishing the Law, but teaching His Apostles, His Church, you and me, how to live and die with Him for the greater glory of God, for His Kingdom on earth, and for the true fulfilment of our brothers and sisters in the world of our time.

Jesus’ main grief against the Scribes and Pharisees was:

            This people honours Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.                        Hypocrites!  Your pay tithes of mint and dill and cumin; but you have overlooked          the weightier demands of the Law – justice, mercy, and good faith.  (Matthew                15:8; 23:23) 

And we have so much of that today, People of God!

Many of those with no faith in, no acknowledgement of, God, love to take up particular social issues along with religious aspects of Christianity -- bits and pieces perhaps of remembered Catholic teaching -- and put themselves forward as the correct interpreters of those bits and pieces of religious teaching ripped out of the context of the fullness of Catholic faith, and understanding them merely as words. 

Dear People of God, do not get embroiled with faithless people arguing about words of faith!

 In the beginning:

         The Lord God took the man and settled him in the Garden of Eden, to cultivate             and care for it.  The Lord God gave man this order, ‘You are free to eat from any             of the trees of the garden, except the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  From             that tree you shall not eat! 

Now notice how Satan started arguing about words:

             The serpent asked the woman, ‘Did God really tell you not to eat from any of                 the trees in the garden?’

God actually said to Adam as you have just heard:

             ‘You are free to eat from any of the trees except one’ 

Dear fellow disciples of Jesus, how true and how beautiful, are these following words of Our Blessed Lord  (John 15:11; 16:33):

         In this world you will have trouble, (but) I have told you this so that My joy may             be in you and that your joy may be complete.  Take heart!  I have overcome the             world, that in Me you may have peace.

 So, though facing mockery and opposition for our faith, we have the soul-satisfying joy of being close enough to Jesus to be able to suffer something for Him in return; and, what is more, in so doing we are being endowed with the protection and guidance of His most Holy Spirit, to be not only with us in Mother Church, but even to be in us His obedient disciples, for which we give whole-hearted thanks to God for His Fatherly love.