Love: The Heart of the Matter
In Jesus’ time, Law and Prophets was used to denote Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament for us Christians). In today’s Gospel passage we find Jesus as the authentic interpreter of the Mosaic Law who comes to indeed fulfil, deepen and enhance the true essence of what the Law truly desires and not to undo them.
Sin begins in the heart and in the will of an individual. Jesus by restating the Law from the Old Testament directs it to the source of the impulse rather than merely considering the external act. In being critical of the Pharisees and the Scribes, Jesus actually identifies their hypocritical attitude and not keeping to what the spirit of the law indicated.
We have four striking examples in todays’ Gospel passage (Matthew 5:17-37) that deal with anger, adultery, divorce and oaths respectively.
It is not merely murder/violence but even the fundamental attitude of being angry and thereby resorting to any such thing as insults or bitterness in speech, that Jesus forbids.
Attraction and desires are God-given and so good. However, if not kept confined to that which is morally right or made use of inappropriately by giving consent to lustful thoughts it leads to objectifying a person and so fails to honour their dignity.
Divorce may be considered legal even in Jesus’ time, but Jesus does state that this was against God’s original intention for marriage. It went against the dignity and the rights of the individual especially, the vulnerable women in Jesus’ day and so was not in keeping with God’s perfect will for mutual fidelity in relationships.
Oath-taking reflects the evil condition of a human being, whereby an oath is taken as a means of protection from the tendency to lie. The integrity of a disciple, for Jesus, ought to be such that there is no need to swear in order to make another believe the veracity of one’s word.
In all these attitudes, Jesus is driving at the basic call to love which seeks out the good of the other person and which entails being patient, respectful and honest. In order to attain this, we would need to do whatever it takes to deal with the seriousness of sin in the heart.
Fr Alliston
