Breaking the Word

10^th Week in Ord. Time, Friday – 10^th June 2022 — Gospel: Mt 5,27-32

Called to live in Permanent Union

The second illustration demonstrates that the law against adultery implicitly prohibits lust. Jesus again shows the close relationship of external actions and internal dispositions. His teachings do not contradict the Torah, but rather they clarify its deepest meaning and restore its original divine intention. Lustful desires and coveting the spouse of another are ways of committing adultery in the heart. Jesus’ exaggerations do not advocate bodily mutilation, but stress the importance of doing whatever is necessary to control the natural passions that tend to flare out of control. He extends his teaching on adultery to demonstrate how divorce can also lead to adultery. He contradicts the permissive interpretation of many Jewish teachers who listed numerous reasons for allowing divorce. Jesus’ authoritative teaching is rooted in God’s original intent for marriage as a permanent and inviolable union.

10^th Week in Ord. Time, Thursday – 9^th June 2022 — Gospel: Mt 5,20-26

Call for Self-Mastery

The scope of Jesus’ command is good relationship with people, not only with the neighbours (5,23-24) but also with “opponents” (vv.25-26). Jesus shows us that the attitude we carry around are already public acts, real deeds, and as such answerable before the judgement of God. Here Jesus is confronting our more frequent sin of irritable, irascible, temperamental anger – the decision to be angry people. Anger retained or expressed creates havoc and judgement. Jesus obviously calls first for self-mastery. Then he commands the discontinuing of anger and the commencement of some creative alternative. Anger happens and many situations call for it. Everything depends on what one does with his “happening” and does with it as soon as possible. Anger is often involuntary and at least for a moment legitimate. It is exactly at the birth of anger, Jesus asks us to pay attention to: What will we do with it? Prolong it or master it? Cave into it or creatively use it? Confront the sinner (other) first or confront our own sinful disposition first?  Jesus is forbidding the everyday anger that we carry about and by which we hurt so many. But he proposes to look for a moment of confrontation in private (18,15). We can capture Jesus intention in the words of Paul, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil” (Eph 4,26-27).