Last week Jesus commissioned us to go to the whole world and be its salt and light, to preserve its values from decay, season it with love, enlighten it with truth, empower it with kindness, and to do all for the glory of God. Today, Jesus outlines three main attitudes we need not only as His disciples, but in order to make it into the Kingdom of heaven, viz: obedience, self-denial, and reconciliation.
OBEDIENCE
To be a disciple of Jesus is to learn how to do His will and not our will. For our obedience to have value, it cannot be forced; it must be freely chosen. Such is the message of the First reading where we are invited to obey God’s law in this very honorary way: “If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you; if you trust in God, you too shall live … Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.” I cannot be a disciple of Jesus and insist on doing things my own way. As someone has said, “the path to hell is marked with ‘I did it my own way.’” How fitting therefore is the response of today’s psalm when we are reminded: “Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!”
Laws are never given to us to inhibit our freedom but to enhance it and enable us enjoy whatever is at hand. This is as true with sports rules as it is with house rules and even much more with the commandments in the household of God, the Church. Little wonder why today’s Gospel begins with Jesus making it very clear: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” True obedience to God’s law is to obey all of them or none of them. We cannot pick and choose between the commandments as if we were in a market or restaurant. No one picks and chooses which rules to follow or not follow in sports, else they get disqualified. Why do we sometimes feel it is different when it comes to God’s laws? Heaven demands our total obedience, our total submission. The Good News is He who invites us to obey is the first to do so Himself a thousand times over: “I have come not to do my will but the will of the One who sent me” (John 6:38), says the Lord.
Self-Denial
In reading today’s Gospel, the first thing that is so evident is the non-compromising tone of the conditions to enter the Kingdom of heaven: “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away… whoever divorces his wife – unless the marriage is unlawful – commits adultery... everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” The cost of Heaven is all or nothing. The message is clear: it is better to lose a part of your body than the whole of it. Self-denial is the good disposition by which we learn to give up things of a lower value for those of a higher value. For instance, in the presence of the higher value of the dignity of a human person, a man tempted to look another with lust will give up the base desire for the higher value of the other’s dignity.
The question remains, but what is this reality that demands my all? St. Paul in the second reading tells us that heaven is beyond all treasures imaginable. He has no words for it, but to say: “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, this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.” To seek heaven is to seek God as our beginning and our end. Ultimately, to obey God, to deny ourselves of all that estrange us from God are all expressions of our love for God. Not only are we called to guard against the things that separate us from God on this earthly pilgrimage, but we are equally called to guard against those that separate us from each other.
Reconciliation
Our Lord hates nothing like pretense – nothing impure can stand before God neither in heaven nor here on earth. When Jesus challenges us that our spirituality must surpass that of the Scribes and the Pharisees, this is exactly what He means: that who we portray to be outwardly must be an expression of our inward self. We cannot be angels in the street and devils at home. If the Mass is heaven on earth, then we must repent of our pretense before we approach the altar of God: “If you bring your gift to the altar, and there 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.” Every Sunday should be an opportunity for us to examine our lives in light of this mandate of our Lord in today’s Gospel. Once again, Jesus reminds us today that we cannot divorce love of God from love of neighbor. How do we expect to be in eternal communion with our neighbor in heaven while on earth we do not see eye to eye! Life on earth is a time of mercy, of reconciliation.
It suffices to say: reconciliation is the goal of forgiveness. In order to reconcile, we must first forgive. We can easily forgive by first recognizing how much we have been forgiven by God: “If you O Lord should mark our guilt, Lord who would survive? (Psalm 130) Secondly, we can only forgive as Jesus shows us how from the height of our crosses, with the reason that people do not know what they do when they hurt us. Finally, our reconciliation begins to happen the moment we offer the hurt the other has caused us as a sacrifice for their salvation and our reconciliation.
As we receive our Lord in the Eucharist today, may the fire of His love melt away from our hearts any pretense so that our lives be an expression of our communion with Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Amen!