7A23.   Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18.   “You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart.” “Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against any of your people.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  The Hebrew Law or Torah was concerned with fraternal love so that one does not hurt one’s kin.  However that love was not commanded for everyone but only those who were somehow related or connected to you.

Matthew 5:38-48.   Again Jesus changes the Old Testament Law or Torah as he says, “But I say to you.”  Now Jesus calls upon us to love everyone, just as God loves everyone for whom “he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”  In the Old Testament God gave just Ten Commandments.  Now God commands us to do and obey everything he wants of us.  “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  This means we are to be in his image and likeness as God created us to be, holy as he is holy, love as he is love.  (Genesis1:26-27)  God the Father wants his child to the person he created us to be, what he had in mind for us when he first thought of us.  God the Father wants to be proud of how well, with his aid, we have turned out when we stand before him at the end of our life before the pearly gates.

1 Corinthians 3:16-23.  “You are the temple of God” because “the Spirit of God dwells within you.”  By our Baptism, the Holy Spirit dwells within us.  The God who died on the cross for us because he loved us so deeply and dearly loves us so very much that he lives within us.  Let us embrace the God who embraces us.  Let us belong to the God who wishes to belong to us, if we but open ourselves to him.  This world endlessly and at times overwhelmingly tempts us to belong to it.  The immediacy and strength of the physical presence of this world often dominates us so that we can lose sight of the God who is the foundation of goodness and eternal love.  However, everything that is not of God is worthless, if not, in the end, destructive.

 

7A20.    Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18.  The Lord commands Moses to tell the whole Israelite community: “Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.”  Clearly God is telling his people to be as he is, holy and pure; not living as just another animal of this world but as a people close and dear to God, as his own.  In Genesis 1:26, “Then God said: “Let us make man in our image, after our own likeness.  Let them have dominion over” all the animals of this earth.  We are to live in his image and not in the image of the other creatures of this earth.  God in his holiness bears no hatred, grudge, nor revenge.  We must do as God does, because we have been made in his image and likeness.

Matthew 5:38-48.   God never says, “Do evil to those who do you evil.”  God never does anything evil; we do it to one another or the devil does it. In Genesis in its narrative of the creation, after God has done his work of creation we read: “God saw how good it was.”  In chapter 3 & 4 of Genesis we read that evil came into this world by what was done by Adam & Eve and then by Cain.

Jesus said, “Offer no resistance to one who is evil.” However, Jesus clearly resisted the temptations of the devil in the desert.  At Nazareth when the people became infuriated with him and brought him “to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him headlong, he passed through the midst of them and went away.” (Mark 4:29b-30)  Again Jesus resisted their evil intent.  My understanding of what Jesus meant by “offer no resistance” is that there are occasions when things work out better when one offers no resistance and so we do not offer resistance.  The best example of that is when Jesus did not resist his arrest by the band of soldiers and guards that Judas brought into the garden of Gethsemane because he (Jesus) had been brought into this world to offer himself up as a sacrifice for the redemption of our sins.  Jesus said, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  God is infinitely perfect.  In our humanness we have a limited capacity to accomplish what is good.  If we are called to our judgment when we are on the life’s road doing our best in God’s eyes, all will go well.  The measure of the goodness to which we are called is God and God alone.  God’s love embraces us to be holy as he is holy.

1 Corinthians 3:16-23.    “Brothers and Sisters: Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?  If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.”  By our baptism the Holy Spirit dwells in us and works with us to create that truly holy person that is to be a child of God made in his image and likeness. The Holy Spirit enables us to share in God’s holiness.  Remember that only saints are permitted in heaven.  It is our life’s work and goal to become saints by achieving holiness through uniting our life to the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

7A   Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18.  “Be holy, for I, Lord your God, am holy.”  What does that mean for us?  Later God says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Who is it that commands this of us?  “I am the Lord,” your God who is master over you.  What does it mean to love.  “You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart.”  “Take no revenge and cherish no grudge.”

Matthew 5:38-48.  No longer “an eye for eye and a tooth for a tooth,” “offer no resistance to one who is evil.” Not only that but indulge and cooperate with the one strikes you, or wants your tunic or your service or to borrow from you.  Should we understand all this in strict sense?  In the Gospel for Monday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time (Mark 8:11-13), the Pharisees demand a sign (miracle) from heaven from Jesus.  He responds, “No sign will be given to this generation.”  The next day’s Book of Genesis reading (6:5-8, 7:1-5, 10) says, “When the Lord saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth,” God sends the flood to destroy those evil people, except for Noah who is not evil.  Obviously, Jesus’ words should not be taken literally but as examples of how far God’s love is willing to go, given the proper and appropriate situation and circumstance.  This gospel ends with, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  This means that God is perfect according to his capacity to be perfect which is infinite and we are to perfect according to our capacity to be perfect which is, in contrast, finite.  As God is, so should we be.  His is our Father; we are his children, maturing more and more each day to grow in his image and likeness as we were first made to be (Genesis 1:26-27).

 

1 Corinthians 3:16-23.  Paul writes, “Brothers and Sisters (in Christ): Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells within you?”  We are no longer simply human but God lives in us and raises us above what is merely human by his power.  Do not think you are wise, if you belong to what is of this world.  “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God.”  Everything that is good and wise belongs to God and to those who belong to God.  “All belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.” In the Parable of the Lost or Prodigal Son, the father says to the elder (older) son, “Everything I have is yours.” (Luke 15:31b)  This is what Our Father says to us.  Since we have it all because we are temples of God, it makes no sense to seek anything from a world that has nothing.

6A23.    Sirach 15:15-20.     “Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.”  Every day is given us the opportunity to come closer to our loving God who loves us dearly, or to go our own way.  “If you trust in God, you too shall live.”  If we trust in anything or anyone else, we shall destroy our hope for the future.

Matthew 5:17-37.  Jesus said, “I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”  Jesus said in Mark 1:15, “This is the time of fulfillment.  The kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent and believe in the gospel.”  God gave the Law or Torah to the Hebrew People to give them a share in his divine life.  What was initiated in the Old Testament times is brought to fulfillment or to the establishment of the spiritual kingdom of God in this world in which we accept God as the God of our lives and so come to possess the life that only God can give us.  In this Sunday’s gospel Jesus goes on to enlarge upon, amplify, and further develop certain prescriptions in the Torah or Law of Moses.  He claims the divine authority to enhance the Torah, which originally came through divine inspiration, when he says four times, “But I say to you.”  What is in common with the four enlargements Jesus makes on the Torah is that he demands that, not only what we do externally but who we are internally, is in accord with the mind of God.  As God is love, Jesus commands that we likewise be love in the fullness of our being.

1 Corinthians 2:6-10.   “We speak God’s wisdom,” “not a wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away.”  This wisdom “God has revealed to us through the Spirit.”   When Peter said to Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God, Jesus said to him in reply, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.”  (Matthew 16:16-17)  Knowledge or understanding of spiritual things comes to us from God and not from human sources.  Jesus, God made man, revealed to us and continues to reveal to us through the Holy Spirit how God thinks so that we may truly be children of God, our Father.

6A20.   Sirach 15:15-20.   Life is at once a spectacular gift and a threatening challenge.  Choose well and live an unimaginably wonderful eternal life; choose poorly and experience a hell beyond any words or nightmares. “Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.”  God “is mighty in power, and all-seeing.”  “He understands man’s every deed.” God is love.  If we reject God, we reject love and shall live forever an existence that is utterly loveless.

Matthew 5:17-37.   Matthew’s chapter 5 is written to contrast the Mosaic law-filled covenant of the Old Testament with the Christ-filled covenant of the New Testament.  What the Torah or Law commanded is surpassed and fulfilled by the requirements of a life in the Holy Spirit.  Matthew’s chapter 5 finishes with the new command that summarizes the whole chapter: “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  In Matthew 5:17b-18, Jesus says, “I have not come to abolish but to fulfill.  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.”  Through his crucifixion, resurrection and kingship in heaven, all things have taken place and the purpose of the former law to make us holy has been fulfilled.  We read in Hebrews 5:7a, 8-9, “In the days when he was in the flesh, Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”  The law of the Old Testament is rendered useless because now all salvation comes through Jesus and no longer through the law.  Jesus said in Matthew 28:18b, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”  Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “So whoever is in Christ is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.”

1 Corinthians 2:6-10.   The all-knowing God has a wisdom that is beyond anything that this world can fathom.  God uses his wisdom to work together with his love for us so that we will one day be brought to share in his divine glory.  From Isaiah 64:3 Paul takes: “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him,” that what “this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.”  So great is God’s love that he wished to share it with those who would freely choose to love him more than anything else and despite the fact that we had other seductive choices.  To love God and his will with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and all our strength (Mark 12:30) is to embrace God’s eternal love for us.

 

6A Sirach 15:15-20.  In this reading the word “choose” is used three times.  “Before man, are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.”  Our life, as lived by us, is basically going to be a choice of one or the other.  The choice cannot be forced on us.  The fire is the omnipotent power of God; the water, the ocean of worldly worries and pleasures that can drowned us.  God “understands man’s every deed,” what is at the depth of hearts and minds that produces our words and actions.  He is “all-seeing”.

Matthew 5:17-37.  Jesus says, “I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”  What Jesus brings is what the Law, the Torah, offered and infinitely more.  The Law was only the beginning of what the fullness of Jesus brings.

Jesus then goes on to give some examples of what that fullness is, so much more than the Old Testament Law.  (1)”Whoever is angry with his brother” or says anything that is a ‘put down’ “will be liable to judgment.”  You kill, maim or harm not only another’s body but also his spirit or psyche.  (2)If you “recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”  How can we be reconciled with God, if we are not reconciled with the people God loves?  (3)”Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  A sin in the body is the same as a sin in the heart.” (4)”It is better for you to lose one of your members (of your body) than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna.”  Get a hold of your priorities and make sensible decisions.  If a sinful choice now, no matter how good it looks for the here and now,  makes you lose everything later, what sense does it make. (5)”Whoever divorces his wife-unless the marriage is unlawful (has cause to be null and void, i.e. never truly a marriage in God’s eyes) – causes her to commit adultery.”  To be married as a Christian, i.e. in Christ, is to be married in the unbreakable bond of love because God is love.  (6)”Do not swear at all.”  In other words, it seems that at that times swearing (not cursing) by this or that obligated one to be more or less true to his  words.  Jesus is saying that one’s making a commitment or verifying a statement, should be enough.  One should stand by one’s word without any need for swearing to the veracity of your words or your full commitment to do what you said you would do.

To summarize the fulfillment of the Law that Christ has brought is that the interior of one’s person has to be at one with exterior.  It is not enough just have external acts visible to the world.  What we are and have grown to be, and not just what we show on the outside, must show the integrity of the whole and entire person.  We must be truly good on the inside and out to be to fully good. We cannot be just Sunday Catholics.  Our whole person must belong to God.  “He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’”(Matthew 22:37)  Secondly, everything about us must show a sensitivity and obedience to what God wants of us and not of “that’s the way we’ve always done it around here.”

1 Corinthians 2:6-10.  “But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.”(John 16: 13a)  Genuine wisdom is the capacity to see the truth, reality, what genuinely is and not just what some people always thought or what people are thinking nowadays.  Our “God has revealed to us through the Spirit” his plan for our salvation, “mysterious, hidden, which God predetermined before the ages for our glory.”  This is ”what God has prepared for those who love him,” love him thoroughly, totally , completely.

 

5A23.   Isaiah 58:7-10.   God tells his people that he will be with them when they act toward others with the love that God himself has given them as the heart of their life.  “Then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday.”

Matthew 5:13-16.  The beatitudes that precede this Sunday’s Gospel call us to be people who are filled with the presence of God and a life, that is thoroughly spiritual and not of this world’s ways.  Then we are the salt that is God’s goodness and strength, and the presence of God’s brilliance shines from within us.  When we live out of the life of God’s presence within us, we live a life that is far beyond that of the life that is lived as just another animal of this world.  That life cannot help but shine from within us.  Just by being who we are in the Lord, our everyday life gives glory to the God who is the source of our life.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5.    “I did not come with sublimity of words or wisdom,” “except Jesus Christ, and him crucified,” “so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.”  Our ‘original sin’ or natural human compulsion is to live out of ourselves or our natural human instincts, that is to be self-centered or centered in what comes to us naturally.  Our divine calling is to be God-centered, that is finding our lives and living our lives in the God who lives and dwells within us.  At our baptism we received the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit “remains with you, and will be in you.” (John 14:17d)  Jesus himself said of himself: “Remain in me, as I remain in you.”  (John15:4a)

5A20.   Isaiah 58:7-10.    Love is not only feeling affection for others but also doing good for them.  Love must be both heart and hands.  This is not only common sense but also what God demands.  How can we ask God to help us, if we ourselves will not help one another?  God is often made visible and real through those who deliver help through their human hands and genuine concern.  One way God responds to pleas for help that come to him is through people who live on this earth.  Angels are God’s messengers from heaven to earth.  We too are God’s messengers bringing his love and concern to others.   Often God helps us so that we can help one another.  God relates to us not only individually but also as a community of believers; as a single person but also as a church.

Matthew 5:13-16.  Without salt many foods are tasteless and without light we cannot see.   Salt and light are essentials.  God, who is invisible and not physically present, makes his presence felt through us.  If we do not have God vibrant, alive and thriving within us we are salt that is lifeless and a lamp without light, deserving “to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”  One very important way God is present to this world is through his faith-filled followers.  By his lively presence within us, Jesus’ loving deeds and life-giving words are seen and heard  In this way we give glory to our glorious God.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5.  In the Acts of the Apostles 17:16-34 we read that Paul did go to Athens where the great philosophers had lived and taught.  There Paul did go “with sublimity of words or of wisdom.”  That effort was a failure and he was rejected.  Now in Corinth he comes only with “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” It is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that we can come to have full faith in Jesus Christ.  Otherwise we will be like the seed (Matthew 13:18-23)  that fell on the path or on rocky ground or among thorns that bore no fruit, good for nothing “but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

5A :  Isaiah 58:7-10.  This reading has something of the corporal works of mercy in Matthew 25: 31-46.  The reward here is not as in the Last Judgment but that the Lord will treat one generously in this life.  It will be as if one’s light will always shine and the darkness or gloom will never envelope you because God blesses your righteousness.

 

Matthew 5:13-16.  These verses follow the beatitudes in Matthew’s Chapter 5.  It is as if when you practice the beatitudes, then you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  In their goodness the works of the followers of the Christ never leave the world in the darkness or fed with the insipid or the decayed and rancid.   We are Christ’s beacon of light to all the world; we are the Holy Spirit’s bright light shining in the household of Jesus’ followers, reinforcing their faith.  The good deeds of Christians give glory to our heavenly Father by showing that we are fruitful through the grace of the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5.   Paul proclaims the mystery of God not out of his own “sublimity of words” or of his wisdom.  He writes, “I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling” because he realized that on his own he could not bring people to faith.  It was only through the power of God that the Corinthians could come to faith.  In other words, Paul was learning to become fully dependent on God and not on himself.  Not I, Lord, but it’s always you that makes it (the good) happen!

4A23.    Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13.  To be humble simply means to live with God as the God of my life, who is life for me.  Humility is to live in the genuine and absolute truth, the reality that God is the source of all goodness.  Surrendering my life to God means to forego the natural desire for me to be at the center of my life.  This is a struggle up until our last breathe.

Matthew 5:1-12a.  In beginning of his public ministry, Jesus said in Matthew 4:17b, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  He was calling upon us to repent of belonging to the kingdom of earth and coming under its kingship and instead to embrace God as the ruler or king of our lives, even while we still live on this earth.  Jesus gave his disciples a lesson or teaching in how to become a people of his kingdom.  Live, filled with God and not with this world. Grieve with those who are hurting so to be a comfort to them.   Live in the truth that is found in God and not in what this world claims to be true.  Find one’s life satisfaction in doing well in God’s eyes, no matter what others may think of us.  Love those who have hurt us.  May God be our only motivation.  Live in union with God’s Will.  Be happy when people challenge us for confronting evil.  Be happy when people persecute us as they did Jesus.

1 Corinthians 1:26-31.  In Acts 17:22-32 Paul preached elegantly to the learned and wise in the Areopagus of Athens but was rejected by them because it was not their worldly wisdom.  So Paul went to the lowly people of Corinth who, since they were not filled with the philosophies and wisdom of this world, were ready to accept God’s wisdom.  The only one who possesses the knowledge of the entirety of reality or truth is the God who made this universe.  What is not of God is an illusion and self-deception!