Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Bishop of Lake Charles
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 13, 2011
Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church
Oakdale, Louisiana
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” Matthew 5:17
Paging through an old missal, I found a holy card with this inscription on the reverse side: “For knowing the Ten Commandments.” It was signed by the priest who gave me my First Holy Communion and brought back many memories of my childhood catechism. In the second grade, when I was seven years old, the teacher expected us to memorize the Ten Commandments. To test us, the parish’s assistant priest would visit the classroom and hear each of us recite them. This is not all we needed to know, but it was essential. I learned them, and they stayed with me for the remainder of my life.
I trust that our children are still learning the Ten Commandments. They first appear in the Book of Exodus, Chapter 20. They are God’s gift to His People. He wants them to know what it is that He expects of them. They are basic and fundamental and tell us how to live our lives, so that harmony and peace can exist not only between God and us but also between our neighbor and us.
When Jesus goes up a mountain to teach, He does not negate or do away with the Ten Commandments. Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17). His purpose and mission is to fulfill. This means that he expands upon the meaning of the Ten Commandments. He takes them and shows us that there is more to each commandment than just the “letter of the law.” The examples given in today’s Gospel deal with killing, adultery, divorce, and lying under oath.
In some ways, each of these commandments seems to be quite different. Yet, they all deal with one essential element of all the commandments—relationship. When we break a commandment, a relationship is severed. Each of these sins speaks for itself in this regard. Killing is the taking of another’s life, adultery is violating the union of husband and wife, divorce is the breaking of a relationship between a validly married couple, and lying under oath deals with dishonesty, which always harms a relationship. There is no such thing as a personal sin. Every sin has some effect on not only our relationship with another person but also our relationship with God.
What is new with the teaching of Jesus is how he expands the commandment. For example, He says about adultery, “… everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). This teaching “flies in the face” of what I have so often heard people say: “It was only a thought. I didn’t actually do anything.” When we have made a decision, we have acted and we are responsible for that decision. These “acts of the mind” are acts of will and they orient us toward an end which is not a good.
Recently a number of individuals, leaders in the church and community, have brought to my attention the problem we are facing in our society with pornography. Because of the Internet, access to pornographic images has only increased. Those who engage in viewing pornography often justify it by referring to it is as a completely personal activity. Yet it has implications and can be adverse to married life and relationships with our neighbors. As a pastor, I have seen true harm done to individuals resulting from addiction to pornography. We should be forewarned, and this is where Jesus’ words of warning are particularly pertinent: “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna” (Matthew 5:29).
Our Lord says in the Gospel today, “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37). In other words, followers of Jesus Christ are supposed to live a moral life. A moral life requires saying “yes” and “no.” We make decisions. We should be aware of the moral consequences of our decisions and take responsibility for them. “Anything more is from the evil one.” All of the justifications we hear these days for aberrant behavior are attempts to find some middle ground between “Yes” and “No” that does not exist. They don’t justify at all. They instead give license to act in a selfish way without any consideration for God or others.
With all of this said—and much more could be said—we are called to live rightly in a way that “surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees” (Matthew 5:20). We are all sinners, and we must repent. There can be no change unless there is repentance. Once repentant, we must take every step to avoid the occasion of sin and live honestly with a “yes” that means “yes” and a “no” that means “no.” Only in this way can we witness to the “kingdom of heaven” to which we are called in the life to come.