What Law? And What Good Is It?

Sixth Sunday in Course 2023

Today we have an opportunity to reflect on the longest psalm in Scriptures, which is numbered 119. It’s easy to remember three psalms other than the ever-popular 22, “The Lord is My Shepherd.” Psalm 117, “praise the Lord, all you nations” is the shortest psalm, just two marvelous verses of praise and thanks. Psalm 118 “Give thanks to the Lord. . .His love endures forever” contains several allusions to Christ’s Resurrection, and is called the “Easter Psalm” for a line that Jesus quotes: “The stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone.” And Psalm 119 is not only the longest, it is ordered by the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and, line by line, extols God’s Law.

“Wait a minute,” you may ask. St. Paul spends a great part of his letters saying things like “the works of the Law kill, but the Spirit gives life.” (2 Cor 3:6) He also famously taught, “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.” (Rom 3: 28) So is the Law of the Old Testament good toward our salvation and sanctification, or not?

Let’s step back into the early years of the Apostle Paul. Remember he was training to be a Jewish rabbi, probably from his earliest years in Tarsus. Moreover, he was brought up to be a Pharisee, a sect that confused holiness and godliness with keeping not just the Ten Commandments, but the other regulations laid down for the Temple priests, for observing the Sabbath and keeping ritual purity. On Paul’s conversion, he heard from the Risen Jesus that he had gotten lots wrong in his early years. He learned that the critical issue of life is in the question, “How must I live to be one with Christ after death?”

And the answer is to live and die in love, charity. We must love God above all things, even to the extent of laying down our life rather than denying His Truth. And we must love our neighbor as ourselves, even treating them better than we treat ourselves, so that they can enjoy the freedom of living a life in love. That’s a wisdom turned down by first-century culture, and continues to be denied by twenty-first century culture. That’s the Law that causes us to sing “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. Teach me, O LORD, the way of thy statutes; and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep thy law and observe it with my whole heart.” If we live by Christ’s law of love, driven by His Holy Spirit, we will automatically obey the Ten Commandments and even go beyond them toward self-sacrificial works of mercy and compassion.

This is how Christ fulfills the law, and wants us to participate in His fulfillment. What good does it do if we simply avoid injuring another person, or intentionally taking his life? Charity expands on that commandment and enables us to do good for people we might be angry with. What good does it do if we only eschew sexual harassment, fornication, rape, and out-and-out adultery, all mortal sins? Charity expands on that important rule of life and enables us to treat all we meet with respect they may not ever get from someone else, and to encourage young men and women in our families and others’ to lead chaste lives. The opposite of stealing is not avoiding theft; it is giving to the poor so they are not tempted to steal. The opposite of taking the Lord’s name in vain is not saying nothing, it’s good actions like reviving the practice of using the Lord’s name in praise often during the day.

So here we are in this season of preparation for our Lenten forty days. Properly preparing means more than eating a lot now so we can claim to be fasting by eating less on Ash Wednesday. We need to prepare by finding in our lives ways in which we can do good. Yes, finding money to give in alms, planning out Lenten meals that actually are a kind of fasting. And, yes, stocking up on prayer books and cards. But it also means adopting mental attitudes that will help us do spiritual exercises during the forty days. Then Holy Week and Easter will be more beneficial to ourselves, our families, and our Church. We will become more like Jesus, more like His always faithful Mother, Mary. That’s a Law worth obeying, by the grace of the God we praise forever, Amen.