6th Sunday of Ordinary Time

The Gospel of Matthew The Law: Not Abolished but Fulfilled (5:17–20)

The law retains its status as God’s revealed word, and one must continue to teach and obey these commandments (5:19). But disciples must now follow the law in light of Christ’s authoritative interpretation.

The Gospel of Matthew The Law: Not Abolished but Fulfilled (5:17–20)

In terms of external obedience to the law’s regulations, the scribes and Pharisees were known as model followers of the Torah. But Jesus’ teaching calls for “a radical interiorization, a total obedience to God, a complete self-giving to neighbor, that carries the ethical thrust of the law to its God-willed conclusion.” Thus the standard of righteousness demanded of disciples goes beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees. It requires much more than external conformity to the law’s regulations. Jesus calls his followers to wholehearted trust and obedience toward the heavenly Father that radiates God’s love to the world (see 5:48).

The Pharisees and Scribes were smug. They had no humility.

“Smugness is the Great Catholic Sin,” Flannery O’Connor once said. We are commanded to be meek and humble of heart, to “sit in the lowest place,” yet we are also told that we have privileged access to the truth through the infallibility of the Church. We are even taught that no one is saved outside the Church. So what does it actually look like for a Catholic to be confident that “he is right” without being a super smug jerk?

One obvious rejoinder is that arrogance scandalizes nonbelievers and turns potential converts away from the faith.

According to Lukacs, modern Western thinkers, influenced by the Enlightenment, conceptualize knowledge as either coldly objective (scientific, impersonal, and less inclined to error) or subjective (“tainted” by the knower’s relationship to the known and therefore untrustworthy). Lukacs rejects this dichotomy, and in the essay “Putting Man Before Descartes,” he denies that an “antiseptic” objectivity is an aid to understanding.

key Christian insight: Truth is not just a value but a Person. The implication of Lukacs’ thought is that we cannot fully grasp any truth unless we are in a proper relationship with Jesus Christ and participate in his grace.

—In other words: When Jesus says “I Am the way, the truth, and the life...” truth = Jesus, and not a cold objective reality.

Of course, John Lukacs does not argue that only holy men and women can know fact from fiction or that a saintly illiterate would know more about the solar system, for example, than a sinful scientist. There is a type of knowledge, what he calls “accuracy,” that is seemingly independent of holiness. But, Lukacs argues, the ultimate “purpose of human knowledge . . . is not accuracy, or even certainty; it is understanding.”

Without understanding, our knowledge is no good to us. We might be able to rehearse arguments with technical correctness, but the meaning of those arguments—even the meaning of the terms that constitute them—will not touch our hearts. It is through understanding that the Holy Spirit pours grace into our lives and inspires us to become more like Christ.

Catholics need not become relativists to “take the lower seat.” We can—and must—believe that we are privileged in our access to infallible teaching, the fullness of the truth. But, as John Lukacs reminds us, accuracy without understanding is worthless to the knower. And understanding is impossible without humility.

—I must understand myself. Humility: understanding oneself.

—If I understand myself then I know that everything that is me is a gift from God. My life, my talents, my desires, my wants, my goals, etc.

—If I know everything is a GIFT from God, then I also know that the infallible Church and its dogma and teachings are gifts as well.

—If I know then the Church’s teachings are gifts then I know the it is accurate AND should desire to fully know them.

—If I accurately know the teachings of the Church but fail to desire to fully know them, then I will not recognize Jesus in them.

—If I do not know Jesus I will not understand.

—To know, and act like, Jesus is to be humble.

The Gospel of Matthew (Fulfilling the Law: Three Examples (5:21–32))

External conformity to the law is not enough. The law must be interiorized so that it penetrates one’s heart and leads one to live according to God’s ultimate intentions.

The Gospel of Matthew (Fulfilling the Law: Three Examples (5:21–32))

In the first example, Jesus does not want us merely to avoid killing one another; he calls us to remove the attitudes and actions that lead to killing and, indeed, every obstacle to unconditional love

The Gospel of Matthew Fulfilling the Law: Three Examples (5:21–32)

which prohibited murder, not capital punishment or killing in war

The Gospel of Matthew Marriage and Celibacy in the Kingdom (19:1–12)

Exception Clause in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9

The Gospel of Matthew gives a unique formulation of Jesus’ declaration on divorce and remarriage. Unlike his words reported in Mark 10:11–12 and Luke 16:18, which forbid divorce and remarriage absolutely, the parallel passages in Matt 5:32 and 19:9 include an exception clause that, in most translations, appears to soften the rigidity of the pronouncement. The question is whether Jesus does allow an exception that permits Christian couples to divorce and remarry. Both the Orthodox and Protestant churches hold that Jesus did make an exception to his ruling that marriage is permanent. Typically this is taken to mean that if one of the spouses commits adultery, the innocent spouse is free to divorce and remarry. The Catholic Church, however, has always defended the indissolubility of Christian marriage as an exceptionless norm. In doing so, the Church upholds the authentic teaching of Jesus as handed down from the apostolic age. So how does Catholic exegesis deal with the exception clauses in Matt 5:32 and 19:9?

Though several interpretations have been offered, Catholic scholarship has generally preferred one of three solutions. (1) The first is the patristic view, which represents a majority opinion among the Church Fathers. This proposal holds that the exception clause, which in Greek literally reads “except for sexual immorality,” allows for divorce in the case of spousal infidelity but does not include the freedom to remarry. Sexual promiscuity by one of the marriage partners may give reason for a couple to end their common life together, but neither a separation nor civil divorce dissolves the marriage bond. (2) A second solution is called the preteritive view. According to this view the exception clause is taken as a preterition, that is, as a parenthetical comment in which Jesus passes over the possible grounds for divorce as irrelevant. An interpretive translation of the saying might read: “Whoever divorces his wife—setting aside the entire matter of divorce and its justifying grounds in the past—and marries another, commits adultery.” (3) A third alternative, developed in modern times, is sometimes called the consanguinity view. This interpretation is built into the NAB’s translation of the exception: unless the marriage is unlawful. The idea is that Jesus makes an exception for divorce and remarriage in the case of invalid marriages between persons too closely related. Couples in this situation are in violation of the incest laws of Lev 18:6–18, and so their union, which is invalid due to an impediment of near kinship, should be terminated. Divorce in this case is equivalent to an annulment, since a true marriage never existed.

The Catholic Church has not officially endorsed any one of these views. All are permissible interpretations inasmuch as all uphold the indissolubility of lawful marriage and allow no true exception for couples to divorce and remarry so long as both spouses are living.