Saturday, First week in Lent - March 4, 2023
The WORD in LENT: Deuteronomy 26: 16-19; Matthew 5: 43-48
The first reading today focusses on the figure of Moses, as the one who gave an identity to the people. What was the identity he gave them? The identity of the people of God! Moses in fact acts as a mediator between God and God's people, creating within the people a sense of the people of God. How did he do that? Through the law that he taught them from the Lord.
In the Gospel we have another grand figure, that of Jesus, who dies to give us a renewed identity! What is the identity? The same - as the people of God, and the people of the Reign of God. Jesus is the Mediator par excellence between God our Father and Mother and us. How does he renew that identity? Through upgrading the law that Moses had given - the upgraded law is called LOVE!
Love and love alone can be our identity and that is what Jesus tells us. He did not give us the law as the basis of our identity, but our identity is itself the law, the law of love! We shall be people of God if we love; we shall not be so, if we do not love. There is no asking: whom should I love? There is certainly no meaning in the question, to what extent should I love! Yes, love is the very grammar of our life as people of God and people of the Reign.
Love is a lifestyle indeed... and that is the lifestyle of peace! Peace cannot be bought or brought to anyone or any setting. It has to be lived and experienced. It has to be shared not created. It has to be developed and evolved, not negotiated and contracted. Peace is certainly a lifestyle, the lifesyle of the people of God.
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