Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent
The law and the freedom
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever beaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Mt 5,17-19
Today the Lord announces that he came not to abolish the law or the prophets, but to give them complete accomplishment. What has Jesus made in the world and in history to accomplish the law and the prophets? The answer is: the freedom! However, the law to which Jesus referred is not only the Jewish law, but mainly the law of God. When the men speak of freedom, it means the ability to pursue their own projects, without limits and without compulsions. For the Lord, on the contrary, the man is free when he is capable of pursuing the God’s plan for him. At the beginning of the time it was like this. Then, following the sin which entered the world, the freedom to make the will of God had been lost and the man became a slave of the sin. Mind you, even today the man may be a slave of the sin, but only if he wants, because Jesus Christ released us from that bondage, restoring the original freedom to pursue our plan of life. The way that God selected to liberate us from the ancient slavery of the sin was to send his Son into the world, Jesus of Nazareth, true man and true God, to the purpose of him living among us as a liberated person always following the will of the Father in the thoughts, in the feelings, in the words and in the actions. The supreme act of his freedom has been his obedience to accept his death on the cross to give back to the man his original freedom. At that time the chain which kept imprisoned the world was broken, releasing from the death and the sin Jesus himself as well as all those who recognize him as the Christ, the Son of God. In this sense Jesus Christ has accomplished the ”law or the prophets“: he restored the freedom and with it the grace, the love and the joy of making the God’s will, if we acknowledge him as the Lord.