6,Year A Mt 5,17-37

Dear brothers and sisters!

When you come to the store and ask for some goods, they will give it to you if they have. The shop assistant will then ask you to pay the requested amount for it. And it is your responsibility to pay for these goods.

KE
But beware! In today’s Gospel, Jesus says this: “Unless your righteousness is greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

DI
So let’s ask: “What does Jesus mean by that?” What is Jesus’ “greater” righteousness, or, in another translation, “superior” righteousness? To answer this question, let’s look a little at how the Pharisees understood justice. They thought that by external fulfillment of all commandments and ordinances they would stand before God, that they would be righteous on the basis of fulfilled duty. That is why they called the Pharisees “justified.” According to Jewish dogmatic, there was an agreement between God and man. According to her, God, as a merchant, should have consistently recorded for each person what he received and what he should give. God and man stand side by side as equal business partners. Therefore, God will write down all the good deeds of man “on the basis of the purchase-law relationship between himself and man as a claim of man”. Like me, so do you. If you, man, do good deeds, get a plus, be healthy, get money and be blessed! If you do nothing good, you get minus, you get sick, you get unhappy, you get poor, you don’t get blessings! That was the opinion of the synagogue. They have made God a merchant, a business partner. Justice built on “blasphemy of God”. How terrible this religion was! Such righteousness Jesus seeks to cast aside and to deliver from the heart of man as a poisoned root. Therefore, he tells the disciples that unless their righteousness is different, much greater than that of the Pharisees, they will not enter the kingdom of heaven. These words of Jesus were true, but also terrible for the Pharisees and other listeners because they changed everything. And in the final words of the speech at the top, the following is said: “When Jesus finished these speeches, the multitudes marveled at his teachings.” UK.

A PAIR
Isn’t, dear brothers and sisters, Jesus a bit unfair to these Pharisees? After all, they did nothing wrong, just trying to keep the Law to the point. But the Law is not God. Nor is God the Law. The law is just a cold paragraph. And Jesus did not come into the world as a cold paragraph but as a man with a heart. Jesus obeyed the Law and was neither a scribe nor a Pharisee. Do you know why? For he lived the law. He lived and filled it. He filled him with himself, for he sacrificed himself for us. And since God is love and sacrificed for us, we can say that Jesus is a sacrificial love. He sacrificed the law with a sacrificial love, and thus the law became greater justice.

A PAIR
Do we live the law of God, dear brothers and sisters, or do we just keep it? If we only keep it, are we not like the Pharisees who keep the law to be righteous, but do not fulfill it with a sacrificial love like Jesus? Say if we could live the law, wouldn’t it be more beautiful on earth? With God, you cannot buy joy and happiness like candy in a shop. Do you know why we are afraid to live the law, why do we keep it? Because living the law is very difficult. Living the law requires greater justice and, if necessary, sacrifice.

WE
Similar to this philosophical fairy tale by the English writer Oscar Wild in which he writes: There was a statue of a golden prince in the city. A swallow sat down at the feet of the statue, tired of a long flight to warm lands, and fell asleep. She was suddenly awakened by a drop of water. She woke up. It’s not raining, what is it? She looked up and saw that the golden prince was crying. “Why are you crying?” She asked. “Swallow, I cry because I can’t give people the help they need. But you know what, I will do something. ”So he gave a tailor who had nothing to do with a ruby ​​from his ring. He gave a golden eye to a poor composer who had nothing to eat. He gave a second golden eye to a little girl who sold matches and spilled her into a pool. “Now fly, swallow because winter will come and you will freeze,” says the golden prince. “I won’t leave because I liked helping people. I will tear off the golden crisps and take them away to the people. ”Richtár’s statue was scarred, thrown away. Only her heart was left, and the dead body of the swallow was thrown into the junkyard with the statue, which froze at the feet of the golden prince. Here God said to the angels, “Bring me two most beautiful things out of the earth.” And they brought the heart of the golden prince and the dead body of the swallow.

ADE
In the store we can buy anything when we pay for the goods. We will do justice to it. But such righteousness is never sufficient because in the shop it is impossible to buy the heart of a person filled with love. For love cannot be bought, she grows in man.