Making Friends With The Lord Jesus Fr. Edwin

The Lord emphasizes simplicity in speech. We fall for egoism and primacy of selfishness when we lie and complicate our speech. Truthfulness is the best to follow. Making oaths need not be necessary just to assure the others that we are telling the truth and that one will fulfill his commitment. Ordinarily, what needs to be done is to say things simply and truthfully. Yes if we want to say Yes, and No if we want to say No.

Today's Gospel sends to listen to Jesus Christ who on His own authority as Creator and, therefore, as Supreme Lawgiver, teaches that it is enough to look at a woman lustfully to commit adultery with her. So, God's prohibition against the action of a spouse to engage in sexual intercourse with someone not his or her spouse, also includes "lesser" decisions in a person like looking, imagining, desiring, and remembering such sins. Jesus also corrects Moses' relaxation of this commandment by permitting a certain kind of divorce. He affirms what was from the beginning. One who divorces and remarries, another person commits adultery.

The good Lord explains to us today in the Gospel of the Mass that we need to address the waywardness of our passion called Anger. It should be the right kind of anger. Anger is one of the emotions God has given us. It is a certain vehemence of our strength in battling evil, i.e., evil that we ascertain to be conquerable. However, we cannot give it vent just like that. To be virtuous, it needs to be modulated and moderated by reason, and for Christians, by reason enlightened by faith. This latter means that we should hold Jesus Christ as our model and imitate Him in His Anger.

The Church sets up the life of St. Barnabas for our contemplation today. We can learn from him a lot, especially how he disagreed with the Apostle of the Gentiles and set off in separate journeys on the matter of St. Mark accompanying them.

The sense Jesus gives us about the Law and the Prophets is that these latter were incomplete. Jesus came to complete them, i.e., to perfect them. Thus, He follows the Law of Moses but as the Messiah, He adds to them. For example, with the law against adultery, He underlines the significance of the thoughts and desires against chastity. He explains that even when a man looks at a woman with lust, he already has committed adultery in his heart. We all remember that many Israelites just paid lip service to the Law. They remained only in the motions of obeying the commandments, but interiorly, they did not even care. Our Lord called them out on this.

Today, we celebrate the feast of St. Barnabas, Apostle. Our dear Jesus expounds in the sermon on the mount after mentioning the Beatitudes that we are salt and light. Those are two realities that are well known by the Israelites. Our Lord benefits from them to teach that we are to exhibit the qualities of these realities. As salt, we need to give off flavor to our surroundings. That would mean that we cannot simply be unrecognizable in the crowd because we always adopt what people say and claim. What if they push an agenda that is anti-human and anti-moral? A follower of Christ would need to give witness to the truth that Jesus taught. Then, His followers need to be light. As light, Christians need to help the other know the truth so that they are guided properly through life to reach salvation. There are many errors and fallacies abounding in the world that people exposed to the media and so many hucksters of worldliness are sitting ducks. They are misled by falsehoods disguised as the truth. Then, our role is to help people reach and appreciate the truth.