WEDNESDAY MARCH 6, 2024
WEDNESDAY OF THE THIRD WEEK OF LENT B
Deuteronomy 4:1, 5-9
Matthew 5:17-19
FULFILLING THE LAWS AND KEEPING GOD’S PRECEPTS BRING HONOUR TO MAN
Our world is becoming so carefree. People want to be free from all forms of laws and ordinances. Free to live as they like, free to take up lifestyle that even goes against human nature and creates them enemy of our God. Even in families, children want to be free, or absolutely free from their parents but still under their parents because of the many things they enjoy from them. They wear terrible looks, head styles are outrageous, clothes are becoming rags,not even serving its purpose of covering the body and being modest but now they term it “being modern and current.”
People engaged in immorality and term it free lifestyle and all kinds of outrageous things. There is total neglect to the laws and precepts that guide man. And this has also engendered lose of the sense of the sacred and absolute lose of the sense of sin.
Jesus in the gospel of today draws our attention to the foundational importance of the laws, precepts and ordinances that Moses gave to the people of Israel and urges us to be faithful to it. Not only that, Jesus goes ahead to establish that he came to fulfill the laws and ordinances. Fulfilling them is taking cognizance of them all and making them foundational over our existence, by observing them, keeping them and using them all for one’s enhancement and growth.
Going further, Jesus also says he came to fulfill the laws and precepts, by raising all laws and ordinances above human reason into faith commitment. So that when the laws of Moses is talking about not killing, Jesus’ precepts is talking about loving others even one’s enemies. So the laws are raised to higher plain of moral principles and code which brings grace of Jesus to work immensely in the heart of man, such that things beyond the capacity of man will be overcome and attended by grace. For indeed grace comes from Jesus.
There is great need to begin again observing the laws, the precepts and the ten Commandments of Moses. This is the foundation of all laws and must be respected, kept and fulfilled.
We must not jettison or disregard the laws but strive earnestly to keep them. Then raising them from obligatory command to loving acceptance and serious matters of ethical principles.
The Lenten season calls us again to pay attention to the laws of God, especially we are called to always strive to obey the laws of God. There are never obsolete but still very valid and important for our salvation. And moving on, we must raise them to become our faith commitment, to the extent that they become loving concerns for us.
God our Father, help us to love your laws, to uphold them with all our hearts, to take them seriously and guard them jealously. May our lives be moderated by these laws so that they may form us in your image and bring us the joys, peace and happiness of your kingdom through Christ our Lord
Fr Norbert Uchuno
