Saturday of the First Week of Lent

Title and Theme

Free to the Sons of the Father

Outline and Body

In my youth I sang in church, “Free from the law, O happy condition”

And late would observe that a second line could be, “and now I can go and live like perdition.”

But that misunderstands both law and freedom

It misunderstands the Torah, because the Torah marked the people as God’s chosen.

The people were to “walk in his ways” and “obey his voice” because they were his “possession”

It is that way of life that would “set you high above all nations that he has made” and, in fact, evangelize them, when they saw the effects of that way of life

It is like my own father teaching me the “law” of working with electricity, as well as family customs and rules

I could ignore the “law” and destroy the project I was working on or, perhaps, get electrocuted, or observe it and produce amateur radio equipment

I could live like a Davids and live comfortably as a son of the family and do well in society, or I could ignore them and be exiled from both the family and society

The problem with the law is that the law qua law has no power to help me fulfill it, no way to help me control my darker impulses

Jesus comes and does not abolish the law and the prophets, but fills them fuller in two ways that lead to freedom

First, he cleans up accretions and deepens the meaning

The Torah nowhere says to hate one’s enemy, although Jewish nationalism did. In fact, Lev 19 prescribes loving actions towards one’s enemy.

And that is in line with what he did to the first four commandments preceding this one, often moving from the outward into the inward

Second, he puts all in the new relationship of being sons of the Father

You love your enemies so “that you may be sons of your Father” - a son lives like, or copies Father

Non-family members love only those who love them

We are to grow up into the character of God: we “must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”

Better translated, We must mature in the same character that is the full maturity of the Father.

2 Peter will express it as “partakers of the divine nature”

Are we infants wetting our diapers and throwing temper tantrums or are we mature sons and daughters displaying our Father’s nature fully?

This is a familial or relational dynamic that enables us to keep the Law as it expresses our Father’s nature. Later the disciples learned about the Holy Spirit which is the inner dynamic of the Father in us living out his nature.

So, Sisters, let us wisely resist both legalism and antinomianism, so rife in our society

Let us resist the legalism of obeying the rules without relationship to the Father, to the Triune God

Let us resist the antinomianism of my song, because it separates us from the family and leads us to disaster

And let us always be prepared to teach and explain that to those around us as good witnesses to the faith.

Readings

First Reading

Deuteronomy 26:16-19:

16 “This day the Lord your God commands you to do these statutes and ordinances; you shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul. 17 You have declared this day concerning the Lord that he is your God, and that you will walk in his ways, and keep his statutes and his commandments and his ordinances, and will obey his voice; 18 and the Lord has declared this day concerning you that you are a people for his own possession, as he has promised you, and that you are to keep all his commandments, 19 that he will set you high above all nations that he has made, in praise and in fame and in honor, and that you shall be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he has spoken.”

The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version; Second Catholic Edition. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), Dt 26:16–19.

Gospel

Matt 5:43-48:

43 ¶“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 ¶ You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

¶ 5:43–48: Lk 6:27–28, 32–36; Lev 19:18; Prov 25:21–22.

¶ 5:48: Lev 19:2.

The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version; Second Catholic Edition. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), Mt 5:43–48.

Notes

The key point at the end of the Gospel is the meaning of teleios, which is often seen as an impossible goal, although the LXX names people who are teleios, starting with Noah. Instead, it is the character of the Father into which we are to mature, being “chips off the ole block.” This is what we see in 2 Peter 1.