Jun 11 2024 5 mins
Wednesday 10th week in ordinary time "Mt 5:17-19"
"Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." God, as a good professor, teaches things gradually. It's like a building: The Old Testament is the foundation. On top of a solid base you can build. Jesus didn't demolish what God taught in the Old Testament to start from scratch. No. All that was the foundation necessary to build more on top. As the Scout song says: Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold. With silver and gold, we now have the jewel of the Bible. God has left us all we need there. No more. No less. God wanted the inspired authors to record those words and no others for you and for me. In 1964 the Romanian government released religious and political prisoners. One of them, Richard Wurmbrand, had spent nearly three of his fourteen years in prison in solitary confinement. He described how one day a new prisoner named Avram arrived in the prison. The upper part of his body was in a plaster cast. When the guards left him, he drew out a small tattered book from behind the plaster cast. None of the other prisoners had seen a book for years. It was the Gospel of John. Wurmbrand later wrote that no life-saving drug could have been more precious to him than the 'Life of Our Lord'. From that day the tattered little book went from hand to hand; many learned it by heart and each day they would discuss it among themselves. "When you open the Holy Gospel, think that what is written there — the words and deeds of Christ — is something that ... has been gathered, detail by detail, for you to make it come alive in the individual circumstances of your life. Take up the Gospel every day, then, and read it and live it as a definite rule. This is what the saints have done" (St Josemaría). Mary, My Mother, help me to be consistent in my daily reading of the Word of God.
"Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." God, as a good professor, teaches things gradually. It's like a building: The Old Testament is the foundation. On top of a solid base you can build. Jesus didn't demolish what God taught in the Old Testament to start from scratch. No. All that was the foundation necessary to build more on top. As the Scout song says: Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold. With silver and gold, we now have the jewel of the Bible. God has left us all we need there. No more. No less. God wanted the inspired authors to record those words and no others for you and for me. In 1964 the Romanian government released religious and political prisoners. One of them, Richard Wurmbrand, had spent nearly three of his fourteen years in prison in solitary confinement. He described how one day a new prisoner named Avram arrived in the prison. The upper part of his body was in a plaster cast. When the guards left him, he drew out a small tattered book from behind the plaster cast. None of the other prisoners had seen a book for years. It was the Gospel of John. Wurmbrand later wrote that no life-saving drug could have been more precious to him than the 'Life of Our Lord'. From that day the tattered little book went from hand to hand; many learned it by heart and each day they would discuss it among themselves. "When you open the Holy Gospel, think that what is written there — the words and deeds of Christ — is something that ... has been gathered, detail by detail, for you to make it come alive in the individual circumstances of your life. Take up the Gospel every day, then, and read it and live it as a definite rule. This is what the saints have done" (St Josemaría). Mary, My Mother, help me to be consistent in my daily reading of the Word of God.