Do You Know That Every Choice You Make In Life Has Eternal Consequence?

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
 
Ecclus 15.15-20;  
I Cor 2.6-10;  
Mt 5.17-37

In today’s first reading from the book of Ecclesiasticus we are reminded that through Eternal Wisdom, God created us in his image and likeness; and he fashioned in our hearts the gift of free will. We were not created as machines but we were created with freedom to choose the good through our obedience to God’s commands. The psalmist says in today’s responsorial psalm: “Blessed are those who walk in the law of the Lord.” The matter was, and indeed remains, quite clear for a good Jew: the true path was always to be found in obedience to the Law. God had revealed it, and so we must follow it.

In 1Corinthians today Paul points out that God’s wisdom is mysterious, secret and hidden. As one author puts it, “this is a spirituality for the ‘mature.’ It is reached less by logic and reasoned discourse, but more by faith in a living, compassionate God and by a consistent obedience to one’s conscience, less by argumentation from the other and more by their good example.“In other words, it is believed that wisdom is most accessible when we go beyond the normal, the predictable, the safe and secure way of living. That is trust, only found in the reality of love. That is, going beyond the law to the Spirit-led “being” our best self even today.

In today’s gospel passage, Our Lord to everyone clearly: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them.”
Our Lord often referred to the Law in His dealings with others, and His comments are not always what they expected to hear. As in so many other aspects, their expectations of how the Messiah would act were misguided in terms of how He would deal with the Law.

But that is where we must bring Christ into the picture. He tells us that He has not come to abolish the law, but to fulfil it, which He did perfectly by following His Father’s will. Jesus at the Last Supper gave his disciples a new commandment, the commandment of love: “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another.” This commandment has been misused more often down the centuries than almost any other word which came from the lips of Christ, the Word of God.And that is what we too must try to do: to do what God wants us to do. It is as simple as that, and it is as difficult as that. We are not supposed to blaspheme, we are not supposed to steal, we are not supposed to lie, we are not supposed to commit adultery.

We have to realize that being a Catholic means that we take our idea of what is right and wrong from Christ and His Church. This does mean that our principles will often be different from what we see on television or read in the newspapers. To try to follow Christian principles and to lead a good Catholic life necessitates our choosing to follow Christ and His law, rather than what the world not only tells us is right, but shoves under our noses, all the while insisting that we conform to its ways. What forms the basis for all the decisions which we make about how we should behave? In other words, what principle underlies our moral life? Remember when you say Yes to God and do whatever he tells you, you are fulfilling the Law so let your Yes be a Yes to God always.

Fr Joseph Osho