The Gospel of John does not end on the most positive note. Rather, John tells us, “Jesus did not trust himself to them because he knew them all, and did not need anyone to testify about human nature. He himself understood it well.” (Jn. 2:24-25, NABRE) Mankind can be fickle, untrustworthy, sly, greedy, and even dangerous. These vices stem from our wounded nature, the part of ourselves that is at war with the spirit. St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, makes this quite clear when he says,“…but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind , taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body?” (Rom. 6:23-24, NABRE). This is what Jesus understood: that man is definitely wounded. That is why they were turning his house into a marketplace, why they put more faith in the stones of the temple than in the One who dwells there, and why they finally crucified him (the “they” also being you and I).
God has been trying to remedy this wound of ours since the fall of our first parents. God intervened through covenants, for example, with Abraham, Noah, and Moses. The Mosaic covenant is of special importance today, as our first reading was from Exodus when God solidifies the Covenant of the Law with Israel. This law is given to us by God to help us in our wounded nature.
We live in a society today that shuns laws or at least makes them so relative they no longer have any grounding. From time to time, we need to remind ourselves of the Law and reflect on why the Law is important.
God establishes law for the main purpose that the Law serves as a kind of teacher. The Ten Commandments are to help us judge between right and wrong. They set limits for us, and the Law is to convict our hearts in order that we feel remorse for the wrongs we have done. In many ways, society does not want to be told what is right and wrong - just turn on the local or national news for 5 minutes and this will become painfully obvious. Because of our wounded nature we go beyond the limits or try to suppress feelings of guilt.
As important as the Law is, there is another aspect we must remember and that is that the Law does not “save us”. For if it did, then Jesus died for nothing. And yet, at the same time, Jesus demands that obedience working through love, one embrace the Law in one’s heart and not follow it simply to follow it. Allow me to explain.
Many of you are parents. Do you want your children to love you because a law tells them to or do you want them to love you simply because they do so freely and for whom you are – their parents? If they loved you only because they had to, it would not be love, as it would not be free but a constraint. The same goes for our relationship with God. He desires that we love him simply for who he is and that we do so freely. Now, just as with parents, children must still be obedient and follow the rules of the family/home. The rules are there to help us, guide us, and convict us. When a child does wrong a teachable moment arises – the Law working as a teacher. The child also learns to follow the rules, not so much out of obligation but because of a desire to please his or her parents. It is love that motivates such desire in us; so too with God. When we are graced by God with the ability to love him, we wish to please God and follow his rules – the Ten Commandments or the Law.” When we break them, we know it, which is good since that is Holy Spirit moving us to repentance.
We must also remember that even with the Law that is written there is something else that guides it, which is called the “Spirit of the Law.” You remember the stories of Jesus and his apostles picking grains of wheat on the Sabbath and that of King David and his soldiers eating the holy bread when there was nothing else to eat. In both cases, the Apostles and David’s men broke the letter of the Law because both did something they should not have. In David’s case, the men ate bread reserved only to the priests, and Jesus’ disciples were picking grain on the Sabbath; both unlawful. Yet, there was a human need to eat since both were hungry. The circumstance changes the outcome. Hence, both the Apostles and David’s soldiers did not break the Law since they were within the Spirit of the law. For example, do you starve to death because the Law says you can’t pick grain on the Sabbath or do you eat? Common sense dictates the circumstances. Sometimes the Church herself needs to be careful in this regard, following the letter of the law while disregarding the Spirit of the law. All of us can think of ways in which that has happened, both within the Church as an institution but also with all of us as individuals.
So, then, what is the Good News today? The Good News is that God is always working in us, through all of history, and cleaning and tending to our original wound, be it with the Old Testament Patriarchs with whom covenants were established, the Prophets who preached to us of God’s kingdom, or through Jesus himself in his dying and rising to new life. Isn’t it wonderful to know how patient God is? Even though he knows our nature well, that we can be awful sinners at times, he could yet say from the Cross, through the Spirit of the law and not the letter, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!”
By Fr. John Picinic
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