Homily for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
If you could pick eight of the Ten Commandments to follow and drop two, which would they be? What if you could keep six as commandments and downgrade four to recommendations? Perhaps you’re thinking, “I probably only need about five or so, but I know a lot of people who could use a few more, maybe 12 or 15 for them.” The Pharisees in the Gospel seem to have adopted this last strategy, and perhaps because of their bad example sometimes the very idea of law gets a bad rap. Didn’t Jesus teach grace rather than law, mercy instead of rules? Didn’t Jesus say, “All you need is love, love is all you need”?
Actually, that was the Beatles. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law.”
Now it is true that, as in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus harshly criticizes a certain way of using the law as self-serving and hypocritical. So to be disciples of Jesus we need to think carefully about the role the law plays in salvation history and in our own lives of faith.
Today’s first reading from Deuteronomy makes clear that the law of Israel is God’s gift. It makes equally clear that no one but God may add to or subtract from what he commands. No matter how much we find the commandments hard to follow, no matter how old they are, no matter if we think we could attract crowds of new people to our Church by loosening the loopholes, only God can modify the law of God.
Continue reading “Law and communion: homily for the twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time”
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 