February 13, 2023
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A) on February 12, 2023 at the Paulist Center in Boston, MA. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm 119; 1 Corinthians 2:6-10; and Matthew 5:17-37.
In 21 verses, today’s gospel passage covers a lot of different ideas: how Jesus claimed to “fulfill” the Law and the Prophets, how Jesus raised the bar on upholding the commandments, what Jesus says about anger, name-calling, and lust. And if that isn’t enough, Jesus also speaks about divorce and remarriage. Obviously, we can’t dig into all these ideas in detail in one homily.
The community to whom Matthew was writing was a group of people who didn’t feel as if they belonged with anyone else. They were Jewish Christians who felt rejected both by Jews who weren’t Christians and by Christians who weren’t Jews.
At various points in our lives, we all have probably felt as if we didn’t belong, either. We are imperfect people… destined for the perfection of heaven. Let us take a moment to acknowledge that we rely on God’s mercy to cross the divide.
“We are constantly becoming.”
Nearly two decades ago, Dominican Sr. Carmelita Murphy worked with the Paulist Center and the Paulist Fathers on strategic planning. I only heard her speak once, but I’ll never forget what she cautioned us as we dreamed about who we wanted to be and faced the obstacles to achieving those dreams. “We are constantly becoming,” she said.
We are always growing. We are always evolving. We are always being renewed. That’s true of all people in all religions. It’s not just a Catholic thing, or even just a Christian thing. As we grow in faith, we replace simplistic understandings from earlier phases of our lives with more nuanced understandings of how we are to continue our faith journeys. We are constantly becoming.
For example, consider the community for whom Matthew wrote his gospel, roughly 50 years after Jesus’ Ascension. The political and religious circumstances had already changed drastically. Matthew’s community – which probably consisted mostly of Jewish Christians – felt isolated from both the majority of Christians who were now Gentiles and from the majority of Jews who continued to reject Christianity. If we take certain verses out of context, Matthew appears to be condemning the Law (5:34), the Pharisees (5:20), the entire Jewish people (27:25), and the Jewish religion (21:43). However, if we consider Matthew as a whole, it gives the most positive portrayal of Judaism of the four gospels. Matthew presents Jesus as the new Moses, giving the Sermon on the Mount in a way similar to Moses giving the Law as he received it from God on Mt. Sinai. Jesus himself declares, “I have not come to abolish [the Law or the Prophets], but to fulfill” (5:17). Jesus did not intend to establish a new religion, but like other rabbis of his time, he wanted to reform Judaism. Like other world religions, Judaism is constantly becoming, working towards what God intends it to be.
Nevertheless, through the centuries, the Gospel of Matthew has been used by many Christians to persecute Jews. Countless Christians claimed that in rejecting Christ, the Jewish people had rejected their status as God’s chosen people. After the Nazis used this horrific theology to justify the Holocaust during World War II, Pope John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council in part to make sure that the gospel would never be twisted in such vile ways again. As the Council declared in a document primarily drafted by Paulist Father Tom Stransky: “[T]he Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures…. [T]he Church… decries hatred, persecutions, [or] displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone” (Nostra Aetate, 4). Christians today have a responsibility not only to fight all forms of anti-Semitism, but also to undo the nineteen centuries of damage we have caused. Hopefully, we are constantly becoming the disciples whom Jesus calls us to be.
It’s something the 13 children celebrating the Rite of Enrollment this weekend are doing. They are preparing to literally take the Body and Blood of Christ into their own bodies. It’s something our confirmation teens have been doing all year, as they consider how to live out their faith as they better understand their emotions. Teens: you’re not the only ones struggling with the standards that Jesus sets up today. Anger is a God-given emotion that even Jesus experienced, but it’s a sin to call someone a blockhead (or ‘raqa’). We will probably continue having sexual thoughts until our brains cease to function, but Jesus calls us to live chastely.
If we are constantly becoming…we should ask ourselves: who are we becoming? What kind of friend, employee, sibling, parent, or spouse am I turning into? What kind of person does God envision me becoming? As a human being, Jesus recognizes the challenges of being human. (Sidebar comment: For those of us who have lived through failed marriages, it’s worth noting that the Church’s requirements for receiving an annulment – while quite rigorous – are not as stringent as Jesus’ nearly complete prohibition of divorce. If you have any questions about the Church’s teachings on divorce, annulment, and remarriage, please don’t hesitate to make an appointment with anyone on our pastoral staff.)
Jesus exhorts us to aim for the perfection of heaven, even if our relationships will sometimes fall short in this lifetime. There are so many ways that we, as humans, live in constant transition between one state of being and another. Our identities are not static. We are constantly becoming. Guided by our past, the Holy Spirit invites us forwards to a future more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. The kingdom of God is already here, but our eyes have not yet seen and our ears have not yet heard what God has prepared for us.
As we come to see Jesus’ face more clearly and hear Jesus’ voice more precisely, our next steps on the journey of faith become easier to determine. Or, to put it another way for all the people who told me last month that they loved my references to analytical geometry [show slide]: our life of holiness is like the red curve on this graph that approaches the green line asymptotically. The curve gets closer and closer to the line, but it only touches the line at infinity. Christ and the kingdom of heaven are like that green line: the same yesterday, today, and forever. But we are constantly becoming the disciples Christ calls us to be. Hopefully, by following Jesus as best we can, we will get closer and closer to perfection, even if we won’t reach the perfection of Christ until we are with Christ in the eternity of heaven.