A Homily for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

+ It is only somebody with more authority than his predecessor who can say: “it was said; but I say to you…” Only Our Lord, Who Himself is God, can say this regarding the Law of Moses, which itself was given to Moses by God. Does this not suggest then that God has contradicted Himself? Such a thing is unthinkable. We must then understand how it is that the different passages we encounter in the liturgy today were written.

A key to understanding the continuity of the Old and New Testaments when we face texts like this is the statement of Our Lord concerning divorce: “Moses only permitted divorce for your hardness of heart, it was not so from the beginning” (Matthew 19:8). That is to say that within the old dispensation, there are aspects which were given not for themselves but because the people were not yet able to fulfil the demands that are truly made on them. Under Christ this is no longer the case. No longer is it permissible to take half measures. Or rather Christ, in the full knowledge of our human frailty, has given us the means to return from our sin and begin anew in our struggle to keep His commands.

Indeed, He has given us the confessional and the imperative to repair the damages that have been done by our sin. Often this repair work is not easy, but it is ever necessary through whatever means are possible within the moral law. And not only does He provide the opportunity to start again, but also offers the grace to remain strong in His love.

Reading the Old and New Testaments together in such a manner allowed the tradition to speak of the distinction between the spirit and the letter of the Scripture. To be clear, this distinction only applies to the Old Testament. It exists precisely because it is a divine text written primarily as a prophecy of Christ’s Passion Death and Resurrection, and secondarily as lived in its own historical context. Certainly, this does not denigrate the history, or historical context, nor undermine those parts which are unquestionably and universally valuable. Rather, it enhances them and grounds them within the Christological and Trinitarian perspective.

One of the consequences of every text being written in the context of the coming of the Christ is that they must also be read in the light of Him, as has been passed down in Tradition. Pope Benedict XVI so often spoke of the hermeneutic of continuity as being the manner in which a text ought to be read, but it is even the only hermeneutic that a Christian can ever know. This is what it is to pass on what has been received. It is exactly on this that every Father at every Ecumenical Council has based his contribution. No council has more authority than any other, but works in harmony with them. And the Tradition must, and does, supply clarity if there is any ambiguity. The doctrinal and pastoral necessity with which the Church was faced at the time of any given council only provided the prompting to the given applications made. Thus it is even possible to say that the spirit of any given passage is utterly traditional.

It is not only texts to which such principles of continuity apply. Never is it acceptable to make a substantial and sudden difference to the daily practice of our faith, be that in the church or at home. Only the Christ’s act on Calvary could change our worship of God radically because only there did the prefiguration cease to have any meaning in the face of its fulfilment. And not only did it lose meaning, but became a denial, a rejection, of that for which it was waiting and prophesying. Never before, nor since, can such a differentiation happen. The Gospel cannot itself be fulfilled, nor supplanted. When Our Lord comes again, no longer will He say “You have heard; now I say to you.” Rather, He will examine our keeping of those commands. +