Saturday in the First Week of Lent
Scripture Readings: Deut 26:16-19; Mt 5:43-48
God makes a very important and conditional promise today: HE, love itself, WILL BE WITH US. He is saying that it doesn’t get any better than that! HE WILL BE WITH US. Do we believe that? Is that enough for us? He tells us that His presence with us as a people will distinguish us from all others on the earth!
The condition for this steadfast presence is that we keep His statutes and decrees wholeheartedly, i.e. we live His way of life and delight in it! Why would we do that? A beginning reason might be that we are convinced that less than wholehearted devotion just does not work for our lives. But there is a greater reason that we must grow into.
We cannot trust ourselves to keep the covenant, to love faithfully; idolatry continues today. What we can trust is God’s faithfulness to Himself.
He will keep His covenant out of the love that is the essence of Who He is. And the chief manifestation of that love is His mercy. He said in Exodus, “I will be gracious with whom I will be gracious, and I will be merciful with whom I will be merciful.” That means that His presence with us is out of His faithfulness to Himself; we cannot control it.
Keeping His statutes and decree’s affects not so much His presence to us, but our ability to experience that presence and let it be the summit of our lives.
This wholehearted observance of the Law of Moses is preparing us for the New Law and the challenge it gives us in today’s gospel. The New Law, the Law of Christ, is going to give us a new and more intimate relationship with the Father. The Law of Christ is this: that we bear the burden of others. This is what He exemplified, “even to death on a cross.” Hence this law is commonly known as “taking up one’s cross.” In calling us to love our enemies He calls us to bear the burden of others. Bearing the burden of others is the most fundamental Christian ethic. This ethic gets its authority not from merely being a teaching of Christ; it comes from the example of Christ. This is another key difference between living by the Law of Moses and that of Christ: 
The Israelites were obligated not to Moses but to his teaching. Christians take on the obligation of a relationship to and obedience to Jesus Christ. This time, it’s personal.
Bearing the burden of others is obviously done in a community and fosters the unity of the group. Loving, seeking the good of those we find difficult, fosters unity in community. It is inconsistent with unity-by-scapegoating. It was to emphasize the importance of this kind of unity that Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you: that you love one another.” And it was to emphasize His steadfast love that God told us “I will never take back My love; My truth will never fail” (Ps 88:34).
Saturday in the First Week of Lent
Scripture Readings: Dt 26:16-19; Mt 5:43-48
Don’t wait for the future to come. Start living now the future you hope for and without a doubt it will surely come.
So, love your enemy, pray for your persecutors. If you love your enemy then you are not their enemy and already a future of less or even zero enmity is here.
You have heard that it was said. Jesus is awakening their memory: They have heard something. What, and from whom? That it was said. Not what was said, but just the fact that something was said.
Remember that you heard that someone once said . . . .
This is very far away from what was said, the initial utterance: The initial utterance was made. Later someone said that it was made. Later you heard that someone said that it was made.
Jesus is now calling them to be responsible and even critical because of where they stand in that chain of memory, at the end of it, and far from the beginning. Is what they heard was said true? Is what was said true? On what do I base my faith and my life?
Moses’s discourses in the Book of Deuteronomy are something like this. Now, a generation after the original utterance, Moses repeats it, repeats what was said. But those discourses were written down a long time after Moses, tens of generations later, and so it was Deutero-nomy—not a new law, but another articulation, application, and actualization of the One Law.
In the case of today’s Gospel, what you heard that it was said was never actually said: You shall hate your enemy. Rather, if your enemy needs help, help him (Ex 24:4-5).
What we hear that it was said among ourselves, about ourselves, by ourselves, needs checking out and maybe a retelling, a Deuteronomy. This critical look at what we hear was said is all part of a healthy monastic memory. Each monk has a memory, each community has a memory. In his six antitheses in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus is showing us how to use memory. In fact he is showing us how to do lectio divina.
One is frustrated that there are six antitheses and not the magic seven of completion. But the Church in her mission and proclamation and each of us in the use of memory and healing of memories is always making he seventh antithesis. That’s the point, I think.
So the enemy we love and pray for may even be us; it may be a compulsion, an illness, or just the fact of our mortality—to all of which the Hope of Resurrection is the glorious and final antithesis.
Remember, you heard it here.
Saturday in the First Week of Lent
[Scripture Readings: Deut 26:16-19; Mt 5:43-48 ]
In this Year of Mercy we read today of God's covenant love for us, of His hesed. This is a steadfast love. He promises this in spite of the Israelites having just committed the worst sin: they gave their love to another god.
God makes a very important—and conditional—promise today: HE—love itself—WILL BE WITH US. He is saying that it doesn't get any better than that! HE WILL BE WITH US. Do we believe that? Is that enough for us? He tells us that His presence with us as a people will distinguish us from all others on the earth!
The condition for this steadfast presence is that we keep His statutes and decrees wholeheartedly, i.e. we live His way of life … and delight in it! Why would we do that? A beginning reason might be that we are convinced that less than wholehearted devotion just does not work for our lives. But there is a greater reason that we must grow into.
We cannot trust ourselves to keep the covenant, to love faithfully; idolatry continues today. What we can trust is God's faithfulness to Himself. He will keep His covenant out of the love that is the essence of Who He is. And the chief manifestation of that love is His mercy. He said in Exodus, “I will be gracious with whom I will be gracious, and I will be merciful with whom I will be merciful.” That means that His presence with us is out of His faithfulness to Himself; we cannot control it. Keeping His statutes and decree's affects not so much His presence to us, but our ability to experience that presence and let it be the summit of our lives.
Jesus tells us to “Be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” To be perfect is to be unsurpassable. One may be personally unsurpassable in that she will never be able to perform a task better than one just has. In matters of character, of our development as monastic's, we always feel we can do better … and that's a good thing. Or, one may also be absolutely unsurpassable in that no one can surpass one's performance. Only God is absolutely unsurpassable.
Yet, Jesus is today calling us to be unsurpassable as the Father is unsurpassable. Isn't this notion of perfection impossible? It certainly seems so, but …
It is the nature of a creature to be poor and needy, and thus to be suited to receive, rather than give. It is the nature of God to be rich and powerful thus to give rather than receive. He therefore is first and most perfectly merciful. Luke tells us to “Be merciful just as your heavenly Father is merciful.”
The perfection we are called to is to devote our lives wholeheartedly to being givers, givers of love, and givers of mercy. As the people made in His image and to whom He is always present we are to be unsurpassed in our giving of mercy. It seems impossible, but do we have anything better to do with our lives?