Saturday of the First week of Lent
333
Readings: Deuteronomy: 26: 16 – 19; Psalm 119: 1-8; Matthew 5: 43-48
Today’s first reading is a section from Moses’ long sermon preached to Israel in the book of Deuteronomy as the people reached the very frontier of the Promised Land. Moses urges his listeners to remain faithful to the Law that they had received on Mt. Sinai and to observe its ‘statutes and decrees’ (Deuteronomy 26:16). This Law, Moses reminds Israel, was not given simply for God’s own amusement. This nation had been chosen by God to be ‘a people peculiarly his own’ (Deuteronomy 26:18), ‘a people sacred to the Lord’ (Deuteronomy 26: 19). The justice of the Law, its right ordering of relations between God and humanity, and the right ordering of relations among the people of Israel themselves, is a manifestation of the justice and holiness of God. By keeping the Law Israel becomes, in a certain sense, like God: Israel shares, albeit incompletely, in God’s justice and holiness.
Today’s first reading is a section from Moses’ long sermon preached to Israel in the book of Deuteronomy as the people reached the very frontier of the Promised Land. Moses urges his listeners to remain faithful to the Law that they had received on Mt. Sinai and to observe its ‘statutes and decrees’ (Deuteronomy 26:16). This Law, Moses reminds Israel, was not given simply for God’s own amusement. This nation had been chosen by God to be ‘a people peculiarly his own’ (Deuteronomy 26:18), ‘a people sacred to the Lord’ (Deuteronomy 26: 19). The justice of the Law, its right ordering of relations between God and humanity, and the right ordering of relations among the people of Israel themselves, is a manifestation of the justice and holiness of God. By keeping the Law Israel becomes, in a certain sense, like God: Israel shares, albeit incompletely, in God’s justice and holiness. Jesus, of course, fulfills the Law and the vocation of the people of Israel by perfectly manifesting God’s holiness and justice through living a perfectly loving human life. Jesus is the message: everything he does or says reveals something of what God is like and in our Gospel reading he tells us something about God’s mercy. Jesus declares: ‘love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you’ (Matthew 5:44). Whilst God is indeed just, he is also merciful and this means that he goes beyond the requirements of justice: God is more generous than justice demands and Christ embodies this in the way that he lives. It is not enough, then, for those of us who call ourselves followers of Christ and who are called to re-present Christ to the world to simply love those that love us. We must imitate Christ and pray even for those that crucify us. It is in loving like God, through the Spirit of God, that we become true disciples. In the Spirit we become ‘children of our heavenly Father’ (Matthew 5:45), so perfected in charity by the Spirit that we are ‘perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48).
