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"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" (Luke 6:41) (Photo: DE VISU - STOCK.ADOBE.COM)
By Apostolic Sisters of Saint John | France
"The power of sin comes from the law."
This is an astonishing statement by Paul, a believer who was nevertheless shaped by the law.
It is not a matter here of laws enacted by people, but of the law that God has given to God's people.
Christ affirms that he "did not come to abolish but to fulfill" the law and that it is summed up in two unified precepts: "You shall love your God... You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Mk 12, 28-34).
Yet no prescription, however virtuous, can give us life. Alone, law condemns us to the sole horizon of our wounded humanity, to a love that is powerless in the face of its setbacks and its finiteness.
The new law, on the other hand, frees us from death and sin. And this law is Jesus who, through his Spirit, constantly invites us to freedom.
The life of the Christian does not find its source in a codification of moral laws, but in the love of Christ that springs up in us from the pierced heart of Christ on the cross, the source of the new law.
The context of this passage is clear: Jesus faces the harshness of the Pharisees who judge and condemn their contemporaries according to their observance of the law.
Although they are true God-fearers, they have nevertheless monopolized the relationship with the Almighty in order to put it in a formal framework that attempts to be the measure of religion.
Jesus teaches them a new law, that of the beatitudes.
The Son of Man also challenges us with the beatitudes. After all, who can claim to guide those around them by means of dictates imposed upon them, even if those dictates are religious?
Doesn't our claim to correct our neighbor reveal our own blindness as an urgent call to conversion? What is this radical newness announced by Jesus, fulfilling the law and the prophets, without omitting a single iota?
At the end of the gospel passage offered to us in today's liturgy, Jesus directs our attention to the heart of a person: what comes out of someone reveals whether that person is good or bad.
Elsewhere, Jesus will ask the dignitary who questions him: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone" (Lk 18, 19).
He then reminds him of the two precepts of love and invites him to sell all his possessions to follow him.
This perspective teaches us that what Christ came to establish is the marriage of humanity with his own heart, the only one capable of opening our human hearts to the goodness of God.
He inscribes this law of God in the heart of every person and makes us all capable of opening ourselves to the horizons of the heart of God, which is to love without measure.
What comes from our lips reveals what dwells within us. Because Christ dwells in us through his Spirit, our mouth can no longer condemn but only give thanks and beg "God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ".
As we approach Lent, the Church urges us to rediscover this religion of the heart that the Holy Spirit teaches to those who ask.
The author is a member of the Apostolic Sisters of Saint John in Brest (France)
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