Properly understand.

We live in a time when new laws are being made almost daily, or yesterday’s laws are being amended. New groups of experts are emerging to explore different sectors. New laws, rules, and regulations are being invented. Everything is acceptable to the extent that it serves the well-being and satisfaction of all of us, not individuals or smaller groups. This is also true of religious activity.

The Lord Jesus says in the Gospel: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them” (Mt 5:17).

According to the Evangelist Matthew, we are to understand the Law as an expression of God’s will. In this sense, the Law cannot be abolished but only realized. The Law and the Prophets mean that God’s commandments rest on the commandment of love for God and neighbor. Therefore, where love is taught, the Law is rightly interpreted, which is why St. Paul says that love is the fulfillment of the Law.

We know from the Gospel that Jesus taught us that all the commands and laws and ordinances in the sphere of religion express only one command: To love God and neighbor. Those commands and regulations that lead to this are good and cannot be abolished, but on the contrary, rules that move away from love or make it more difficult to exercise it must be abandoned.

After the Second Vatican Council, many prescriptions were abolished to put love into better practice in life. Therefore, the traditionalists who reject the post-conciliar changes are not correct; in other words, they want to avoid putting the Law in a new spirit.
Let us remember Archbishop Lefebvre, who consecrated new bishops at Elkon without the permission of Rome, and the Pope, who, like him, are opposed to the fact that everyone can celebrate Mass and the sacraments in his language. He advocated that the Latin language should remain.
Yet we see that celebrating Mass in an intelligible language helps us love the Lord God more. On the other hand, the progressives who want to change everything for false freedom, who would like to abolish the Law, are not right either.
During the Vatican Council, there was also talk of a Church decree that does not allow married priests in our Roman Rite to celebrate Mass and administer the sacraments. That priest should not marry is not God’s law but the Church’s.
Before the Holy Father and the bishops, these progressives, especially in the Netherlands and the West, would consent or make any statement; some priests married in advance. Thus, they abolished the Law of Love because it was instituted by the Church, not for disputes of property, as the enemies of the Church teach and say, but so that neither the priest nor his wife, his own family, should stand in the way of the priest fulfilling his duties as a priest, who is to take care to spread the teachings of Jesus Christ, the teachings of love. Thus, neither the strict traditionalists nor the neopagan-progressives are correct.

In the Church, Jesus Christ, represented by the visible head of the Church, the Pope, is correct. When our ecclesiastical hierarchy, guided by the Holy Spirit, decrees something, we accept it and trust that it will bring the appropriate blessing to us.

Therefore, let us all strive to fulfill God’s and the Church’s commandments so conscientiously and honestly as to spread the love of God within us. Consequently, we must not abrogate even the most minor commandment or bypass it out of the conviction that it is nothing because the Lord Jesus tells us: “Whosoever, therefore, shall abolish one of these commandments, even the least of these, and so teach men, the same shall be least in the kingdom of heaven” (Lk. 5:19). Therefore, we want to keep even the most minor commandment to obtain a higher degree of eternal bliss.

We want, therefore, to follow Jesus even more faithfully in this Lenten season so that we may learn from him, as our Master and Teacher, to truly love God above all things because love will conquer, and he who spreads love will also be rewarded.

Even though we live in a time of constant movement, when new laws are being created, let us always keep in mind that they will serve us for the salvation of our souls.