Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 February

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This weekend is Saturday the 15 and Sunday the 16 February, beginning the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time.  

Ladysmith Black Mambazo sing Ngaza Ngambona: ‘They are blessed who keep his commandments;  they will have their eternal place.  Come in, all of you, so that you may be happy and be able to say, I’ve seen him on the cross, the one who loves me. Teach me, Father, to love you, praise you and pray to you.’  

This week’s readings have focused on the law.  During the first part of the week, Jesus rebuked the Scribes and Pharisees for keeping the law outwardly with their lips, but not obeying its true precepts.  He takes concepts like defilement and turns them inside out, by showing that ideas about defilement can, in themselves, be ways in which evil enters into the world.  Later in the week, we heard that this message about the mercy, compassion, and love of God, is a message for all people.  This is most clearly seen in the reading for the Feast of Ss Cyril and Methodius which we celebrated on Friday.  This message is taken out to the ends of the earth.  In today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew, we hear Jesus tell us that we are to keep the Law.  This might seem like a contradiction of the readings from earlier this week.  But listen carefully to this reading, and pay particular attention to the word, ‘accomplished’.  

Certain laws seem to be inscribed in the human heart, laws of justice and fairness, when we encounter these there is a sense of rightness about it.  What are the laws inscribed in your heart?  What are the fundamental principles that you think are true and will always be true?  

Can you think of some situation in the last day or so that demanded some kind of response from you, where you had to make a decision about how to respond?  How did you respond at the time?  And can you ask yourself now, ‘what is the law – perhaps an unwritten law in my heart – that caused me to respond in this way?’  

As you listen to the gospel again, be aware that when Jesus talks of the law, this is not some alien, arbitrary code he is talking about, but the law that comes from the heart of God.  

Is there an area of your life where you’re not sure what the right thing to do is? – what the ‘law of God’s love’ is asking of you?  You might like to talk to God about this now.