Dear Parishioner,

      The Gospel this Sunday is from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. We might call this sermon “Jesus’s manifesto”. We hear Jesus saying: “Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the prophets”. This may confuse us if we believe that the Jewish Law has been superseded by the Law of Christ. Although the Law was given to Moses on Mount Sinai out of love for the Israelites, the Jewish people later came to understand that their capital city, Jerusalem, would be the chosen destination of all peoples, not just the Jews, because, in giving the Law to the Israelites, God was intervening in history to further the process of His revelation to the whole human race. The giving of the Ten Commandments was a huge step along the way. 

      This process has culminated in the incarnation of Jesus, Son of God, Himself. In Jesus, the law for all to follow is now revealed as the Law of love. Jesus describes the working out of this law in the Gospel we hear this Sunday: 

      1) We must not be content with simply refraining from murder. We must be positively reconciled with each other. Unless we seek reconciliation, our worship is in vain. 

      2) We must not be content with merely refraining from adultery. We must be pure in heart so that we can be truly free to interact with each other. We cannot do this if we regard some people as though they were only their bodies! 

      3) We must not be content with the possibility of legal divorce. Rather we must seek to love our spouses “for better, for worse, in sickness and in heath, for richer, for poorer, till death do us part”.  We can extend this attitude to all relationships. We need to be free to love others even when they are not exhibiting their attractive side!

      4) We must speak the plain truth and not seek to amplify our assertions by swearing by God or any aspect of Him, or, indeed, anyone or anything else. Such swearing conceals an underlying lack of transparency. (This injunction does, not, however, prohibit us from swearing an oath in a legal case, or before a solicitor, because it contains a clear, premeditated, assertion that we are telling the truth before God.)

      Love regards the other person’s interests as just as important as our own. In the Holy Eucharist we are given the grace to make this our reality.

Yours in Christ,