The Surpassing Righteousness to Which Jesus Calls Us, Sixth Sunday (A), February 12, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
February 12, 2023
Sir 15:15-20, Ps 119, 1 Cor 2:6-10, Mt 5:17-37

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• Over the last two weeks, we have entered into the first two parts of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The main point of what Jesus is teaching us in this most famous of his sermons is that we, as his disciples, are called to live by a special set of standards, Christian standards, Jesus’ own standards. Jesus wants to live by a higher set of principles than the norms of the good pagans who love those who love them and do good to those who are good to them. The holiness to which he calls us, he tell us today, is supposed to be higher than the standards even of the most observant Jews. Unless our righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, he stresses, will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. So the stakes, in this life and the next, can’t be higher and what he’s going to tell us is too important to ignore.
• Today Jesus sets out the first five of seven different ways that as his disciples our holiness is supposed to surpass others’. These are seven different ways that we’re called, like him, to “fulfill the law and the prophets.” These are seven different ways we are called to be “great in his kingdom” by acting on these principles and teaching others to do the same.
• Before we examine what those first five are, it’s important to contextualize the response the Lord is asking of us by examining what God teaches us in the other three readings today. They’re all like appetizers to get our appetites ready for the main course.
• In today’s first reading, Sirach tells us, “If you choose, you can keep the commandments. To act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. He has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand to whichever you choose. Before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given.” In other words, God has made us free, free to accept his wisdom or free to reject it, free to choose to burn in fire, or free to live according to the cool, living water of our baptism. What Jesus describes to us today is something that he puts to our freedom. If we seek heaven, if we seek to be with Jesus forever, then we’re going to freely embrace his words and choose to follow him down the path he indicates. The choice is ours and it’s the most important of our life.
• In the responsorial psalm, we see two things. First, we behold how blessed is the one who walks in the law of the Lord, who observes what the Lord says, who seek him with all his or her heart. Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount reminding us of the blessings for those who are poor in spirit, pure of heart, meek, merciful and peacemaking, who mourn, hunger and thirst for holiness, and who are willing to suffer on account of the faith. Those who keep the beatitudes are the ones who walk in the law of the Lord, who walk in his ways and footsteps, and, as Jesus says eight different times, they are indeed blessed! But we also see that before someone walks in the law of the Lord, one must desire to do so. That’s why the psalmist prays, “Oh, that I might be firm in the ways of keeping your statutes! Be good to your servant, that I may live and keep your words. Open my eyes, that I may consider the wonders of your law. … Give me discernment so that I may observe your law and keep it with all my heart.” Before we get into the truths to which Jesus will open our eyes in the Gospel, we begin by praying for the strength to be firm in following his words, to observe what he says exactly and keep it with all our heart. Jesus wants to give us that help so that we will be firm in keeping his ways.
• Finally, in the second reading, St. Paul talks about two types of wisdom. The first is the “wisdom of this age or the rulers of his age who are doomed to perish.” The other is the wisdom of the “mature,” those who learn and speak “God’s wisdom,” which is “secret and hidden” to the so-called clever of any epoch, but will lead us to “what no eye has seen, no ear heard, nor any human heart conceived,” what “God has revealed to us,” those of us who “love him.” We’re called to seek to love the Lord, to seek that wisdom, to learn it, to speak it and to live it. This is the path to true spiritual maturity. It’s not an easy path. Just like growth has its growing pains, the path of spiritual maturity is a Way of the Cross. Jesus, however, wants us to grow to full stature in him, if we receive and respond to his help and make that free choice to embrace and enflesh his wisdom.
• All of these insights about our freedom, our desire, and true wisdom lead us to the Gospel, in which Jesus with great candor describes the standards of behavior that are meant to distinguish Christians from the best Jews and best pagans, where he fleshes out the path to spiritual maturity, wisdom and holiness. These five marks of Christian behavior — along with the two we’ll get next Sunday — go way beyond merely keeping the natural law or the Ten Commandments. They are meant to transform our heart and our whole life from the inside out. They challenge us not just to be “good” but genuinely “holy.” All five are hard to live and we need to be candid about that from the beginning. At the same time, however, we need to remember that by calling us to these high standards, Jesus is showing us an exhilarating confidence that we, together with his help, can live up to them.
• The first standard Jesus teaches us this Sunday involves the whole way we treat others. He says that it’s not enough for us not to murder someone. We need to refrain also from the thoughts that set us on the path to maim and murder our brothers. He tells us, “If you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.’” We are called, in short, to love others from our heart and head outward. We don’t love others if all we do is not kill them. If we’re envious, jealous, uncomplimentary, or vengeful within, we’re still not loving them. To enter into his kingdom, to become holy, we can’t kill with our hearts or tongues either. The first standard is truly to love our neighbor like Christ loves us.
• The second standard to which Jesus calls us is to make the first move in reconciling ourselves with those from whom we have been alienated either by our sins or their sins. “When you are offering your gift at the altar,” he tells us, “if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” Jesus is saying to us that it’s not sufficient for us to be merely “good with God”; we also have to be “good with others.” When we come to pray and ask God’s forgiveness, we must examine first whether others have something against us. If they do, Jesus tells us that we need to make the first move and go to reconcile, even if we have been the one aggrieved, just like God made the first move in reconciling us when we had sinned against him. So the second standard is to be reconciling, just like Christ came into the world mercifully to reconcile all things to the Father.
• The third standard to which Jesus calls us is truly to be pure of heart. It is not enough for us not to commit adultery in the flesh, he says. We need to avoid the thoughts that lead to adultery. Jesus states: “I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus implies that even sacramentally married spouses can be adulterers with each other if they allow lust for each other to invade their marriage. But this standard of purity applies to everyone. Those who use pornography or give into lustful thoughts become serial adulterers in their heart. Lust, as St. John Paul II taught, changes the entire intentionality of a human person from a giver to a taker, from a protector to a predator, from someone who sacrifices his own desires for another’s good to someone who consumes another for his or her own gratification. Jesus wants us, rather, to become truly pure of heart, and through prayer, self-discipline, the sacrament of confession, and grace, he will help us. The third standard is to be pure of heart and see and reverence God in others.
• The fourth standard is about the indissolubility of marriage. Today is World Marriage Sunday, the closest right before St. Valentine’s Day, and it’s an opportunity to focus on the blessing of marriage, to pray for married couples and to ponder what marriage is and how it is meant to be strengthened. Jesus reminds us that his expectations for the way we approach the gift of marriage are different from the way everyone else does, because his standards are the only ones that are to true to how he designed marriage in the beginning. Jesus says, “Anyone who divorces his wife causes her to commit adultery; whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” Later on, Jesus explains why, because in marriage God joins a man and a woman for the rest of their life in one flesh, and what God has joined, not even all the family court judges in the world can divide. Some may tragically need, for legal reasons, to seek a divorce, to protect themselves or their children from an abusive spouse or one who is behaving in such a way, like foolishly wasting joint resources, that the future of the children is put at risk, or for some other truly serious reason. But that civil action of divorce doesn’t break the one-flesh union created by God, which lasts until death. It’s easy for us to try to dismiss Jesus’ standards and live by Liz Taylor’s. Many in our culture do. Even many Christian Churches have caved in. But we need to open ourselves to the help God gives men and women to remain faithful to the covenant with each other and with God in poverty or prosperity, in sickness and health, in good times and in worse times, all the days of their life. The fourth standard is to model our life on Christ the Bridegroom’s faithful and indissoluble love for the Church his bride.
• The final standard Jesus mentions this Sunday is about our truthfulness. He tells us that we’re not to take oaths, because we should be so transparently truthful that we have no need. Rather than behaving like people who, to be believed, have to say, “I swear to God,” “Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye,” Jesus wants our “yes” to be “yes” and our “no” to be “no.” We live in the midst of a culture that lies all the time, of politicians like George Santos who totally invent a resumé, of press spokesmen who spin rather than tell the truth, of deep fakes, or so many who don’t keep their word and promises, and others who say only what they think others want to hear. Jesus says that everything other than total sincerity and honesty is from the devil, the father of lies. Jesus, who is the truth incarnate, wants his followers to be distinguished as people who never tell lies, whose word is immediately believed because we would rather die than lie. Jesus calls us to a standard of full-time truthfulness and transparency and will help us courageously keep it.
• We will take up in next week’s Gospel the two other things Jesus says that are meant to distinguish us from others: how we’re supposed to offer no resistance to one who is evil by turning the other cheek and how we’re to love even our enemies and pray for our persecutors. These sixth and seventh standards of the truly Christian life are even more challenging than what we’ve heard today and obviously will set us apart from virtuous pagans and righteous Jews. But we’ll also hear Jesus summarize all seven by saying, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” and we’ll have a chance to focus on what he means as he summons us from mediocrity to holiness.
• Jesus came to fulfill the law of God, calls us to fulfill it rather than try to change it or water it down, and will give us his help to live it. He came to teach us a wisdom “not of this age,” so that we may freely walk in the law of the Lord. He never told us that the Christian life would be easy. He in fact told us that to be his follower, we would need to pick up our Cross each day and follow him along the path of self-giving love. But he also promised to be with us always, with his mercy and grace, every step along this path. The greatest help of all is himself, the Word-made-flesh, with which he feeds us at Mass. Just as it’s not enough for us merely not to commit sins in the flesh, but we have to focus also on our interior thoughts, so Jesus, in order to redeem all of us, didn’t want to remain outside of us, but chose to come inside, so that from the inside he can help us adopt his thoughts, his heart, his desire, and his will so that deeds of true Christian love can flow from our interior bond with him. That is what he does here in Holy Communion. Let us therefore turn to him and ask to purify our thoughts, our eyes, our hearts, our relationships with family members and others, our commitments, and our speech, so that together with our reconciled Christian brothers and sisters, we may live by his Christians standards and come to see what eye has not seen, ear has not heard, or the human heart even imagined, the full blessedness he has in store, in this life and in the next, for those who freely choose to live by his wisdom and walk in his holy ways.

The readings for this Sunday were: 

For the Spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God.

“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,
You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.
But I say to you,
whoever is angry with his brother
will be liable to judgment;
and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’
will be answerable to the Sanhedrin;
and whoever says, ‘You fool,’
will be liable to fiery Gehenna.
Therefore, 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.
Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court.
Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge,
and the judge will hand you over to the guard,
and you will be thrown into prison.
Amen, I say to you,
you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.

“You have heard that it was said,
You shall not commit adultery.
But I say to you,
everyone who looks at a woman with lust
has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
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.
And if your right hand causes you to sin,
cut it off and throw it away.
It is better for you to lose one of your members
than to have your whole body go into Gehenna.

“It was also said,
Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce.
But I say to you,
whoever divorces his wife –  unless the marriage is unlawful –
causes her to commit adultery,
and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

“Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors,
Do not take a false oath,
but make good to the Lord all that you vow.
But I say to you, do not swear at all;
not by heaven, for it is God’s throne;
nor by the earth, for it is his footstool;
nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.
Do not swear by your head,
for you cannot make a single hair white or black.
Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’
Anything more is from the evil one.”

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