Wednesday, 9/9/15
Our Gospel from
Chapter Six of Luke’s Gospel gives us Luke’s versions of the Beatitudes that
Matthew gives us in Chapter Five of his Gospel. In both of them, Jesus announced that there would be
blessings for the poor in spirit, for those who grieve, and for the meek.
I have an odd memory
from when I was fourteen, and I was starting my freshman year at the minor
seminary. What I remember is being frightened that when school started, one of
the priests would ask me to recite the Beatitudes, and I wouldn’t be able to do
it.
I needn’t have
worried. In my twelve years as a seminarian I was never once asked to recite
the Beatitudes. The Catholic Church never attached much importance to them. And,
I think we might have made a mistake there.
The great Sermon on
the Mount that takes up three chapters in Matthew’s Gospel, was purposely
constructed to show how the teaching of Jesus was more important than the
teaching of Moses.
In Chapter Five of
Matthew, Jesus went up the mountain the way Moses had gone up Mount Sinai.
While Moses gathered his tribal leaders around him up there, Jesus gathered his
Apostles around him. Both Moses and Jesus had the people stay below them.
Both Moses and Jesus
stared off with great one-liners. With Moses, they were the Ten Commandments.
With Jesus, it was the Beatitudes.
Following that, in
the Sermon on the Mount Jesus went on item by item, showing how his teaching
was superior to that of Moses. Moses had said we should not kill, Jesus said we
should not even be angry. Moses said we should love our friends, but hate our
enemies. Jesus told us to love our enemies.
Our seminary course went
on as though there had never been a New Law. Our Four Year course in Moral
Theology simply took the Ten Commandments one at s time, describing the many
ways we could sin against each of them. But Jesus, instead of telling us to
just avoid doing evil, preferred telling us to go out of our way to do kindly
things.
No comments:
Post a Comment