Sixth Sunday of ordinary time. Today’s readings: Sirach 15:15-20; 1 Corinthians 2:6-10; Matthew 5:17-37
Having to comment on today’s gospel makes me feel like a little boy who has just been brought to Disneyland and who, rapidly viewing all the thrilling forms of entertainment the place has to offer, stands speechless and gobsmacked.
A sentence from the Master is enough to keep you thinking for days, let alone such a long section of the famous Sermon on the Mount. Having been provoked by someone’s words and uncertain he had understood them correctly, the actor Denzel Washington once featured in a film saying he was slow in uptake. May this not be the case with us today.
Simply said, the Sermon on the Mount is nothing short of a game changer. It leaves no space for mediocrity, half measures, or complacency. It calls for the highest virtues and for a truly noble character. The Lord’s words pierce right to the spirit and the heart – for him, it is not just a matter of one’s outer actions, but rather of one’s inner thoughts and intentions which ultimately define a person. In other words, the very desire to sin is tantamount to sinning, even if this were a private matter. Indeed, sin is to be shunned at all costs – literally! Faced with the reality of sin, it is the only time one should run like a coward.
With divine authority, Jesus speaks of the inviolable nature of God’s precepts, the sacredness of marriage, the unacceptability of being resentful towards others, the absolute necessity of striving for peace, and the importance of being honest and truthful in one’s words. Though his tenets seem more stringent that those of Moses, they are actually more liberating. He goes way beyond presenting a formal, outward adherence to the law, advocating an honesty of the heart that goes deeper and seeks to foster integrity in one’s inner self.
Jesus goes way beyond presenting a formal, outward adherence to the law, advocating an honesty of the heart that goes deeper and seeks to foster integrity in one’s inner self
The Lord’s words were upheld boldly by Moral Re-Armament, the movement founded in the late 1930s and which had a huge impact on thousands of people. A detailed analysis of it is given by Daniel Sack in his Moral Re-Armament: The Reinventions of an American Religious Movement. He points out that it was characterised by four absolutes which it held out as the ideals of every person, namely absolute honesty, absolute unselfishness, absolute purity, and absolute love. It is a sad fact, however, that despite my admiration for such lofty ideals, I cringe before the idea that I myself am called to make such concrete choices. No wonder that Cardinal Fulton Sheen, in his book Life of Christ, asserted that the words of Jesus on the Mount of the Beatitudes echoed back from the Mount of Calvary in “the sound of nails and hammers digging through human flesh”. The Lord who, on the cross, showed us a love of another kind, here speaks a life of another kind.
Moral Re-Armament: The Reinventions of an American Religious Movement, by Daniel Sack
Life of Christ, by Cardinal Fulton Sheen
Needless to say, Christ’s words keep our selfishness and egoism in check. Our very self, often at the mercy of the body with all its many longings, cravings and needs, is to be subjugated to a higher order than that which is purely physical. In every circumstance, asking oneself what the more noble and virtuous choice is may be an appropriate compass, in spite of the intrusions of our worldly nature which stamps its feet and cries for affirmation.
In all this, it is worth remembering that Christ points to a way of life that is directed heavenwards. For this reason, the demands that his teachings make on us are worth embracing, and when we doubt this truth, St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians may be invoked: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” (1 Cor 2:9)