14 March 2025 - Friday of the first week of Lent
Homily
Sometimes, if we read the Gospel superficially, we get the impression that Jesus is not very logical or coherent in his teaching. There are texts in the Gospel in which He preaches against the legalism of the Pharisees, saying that the Sabbath was made for human beings and not human beings for the Sabbath, and so on. But at other times, Jesus tells us things like what we have just heard: that if our righteousness does not surpass that of the Scribes and Pharisees, we will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The explanation for this discrepancy is certainly that Jesus operates according to a different type of wisdom and logic from our own.
And the explanation is also that for Jesus, the Law given by God is not a restriction on human freedom, but on the contrary a gift of love, an indication given by God on how to reach our final destiny. God's will is our salvation, and it is in this sense that we pray in the Our Father: ‘Thy will be done’.
Today's Gospel is the first part of a longer teaching by Jesus, in which He repeats four or five times: ‘It has been said to you... I say to you’... He is asking for a radical change: not a change in the law itself, but a change in our relationship to the law; a change that requires a conversion of heart more than a conversion of law. He is not promulgating a new legalism that is more demanding than that of the Pharisees; He is replacing the demands of legalism with much more rigorous demands of love.
Among the various precepts of the law mentioned by Jesus, let us take just one or two examples. First of all, let's take the precept not to kill. There is probably no precept more trampled on today than this one. Most of the pages of our daily newspapers seem to be written in human blood. Of course, there are the crimes of those we hypocritically call ‘common criminals’. But we also kill, in the name of the state, in the name of political ideals, in the name of race and religion, or often to defend economic interests and empires. Most wars are orchestrated by people other than those who fight and die in them. But Jesus does not simply remind us of the precept not to kill, he invites us to total respect for life, which requires love, forgiveness, reconciliation and compassion. There are many ways of killing other than by using a weapon: indifference kills, slander and defamation kill, envy kills, and above all selfishness kills. Jesus calls for total, constant and radical respect for life.
The other example is the precept not to commit adultery. Jesus asks us to go much further, asking us to avoid any behaviour that treats another human being as an object. Just as there are hundreds of ways to kill, there are hundreds of ways to turn another person into an object: people can be the object of our burning desires, but they can also be the object of our fears, our discrimination, our manipulation, our sense of superiority. Jesus demands total and radical respect for the dignity of every human person.
Above all, whatever the way in which we have offended our brother or sister, He asks us to be reconciled before approaching the altar to offer our gifts. Let us ask for the grace to be able to give and accept forgiveness.
Armand Veilleux