Just a word before we go...Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time...February 12, 2023

Last week we heard that we are salt; being salt is becoming people who are alive, who grow into the people they were created to be, in order to leaven the world. So there we were feeling all salted with grace, when this week we find ourselves peppered with threats against bad behavior.  In trying to get our attention, Jesus doesn’t soft-pedal his message in today’s Gospel.  Rather, he uses what Sirach and Paul express in philosophical and theological language and brings it down to flesh and blood reality in Matthew’s Gospel. 

Sirach and Paul are saying choose life.   Matthew tells us what you do if you choose life.

Jesus was a good Jew; he was reinforcing the ethical demands of his tradition, those of integrity and justice, by introducing something new, an expansion of those virtues into a greater interiority. His concern seems to be not only greater personal righteousness, but  what that righteousness would mean for the sustaining of the community.  By doing this, Jesus is offering us a glimpse into relationships as God intended them to be—loving, respectful, mutual, honest, compassionate, just. 

All the proscriptions cited in today’s readings are not meant to discourage us; we are human, and life doesn’t always work out as we had hoped or planned.  They are instead intended to lift us up, to show us a vision of what could be, what we are called to.  And they remind us that our actions have consequences, so we should make our choices wisely.   What comes through in these readings is the word integrity...that we should be who we say we are, and speak and act accordingly.

But let’s not forget that our God is the God of seventy-seven chances.  No matter where we find ourselves, we are still called to be salt, and light, and still the beloved of God.  We can choose to be more mindful of God’s vision of what life could be, and move toward making that more of a reality...it’s really up to us.

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