WORD 2day: Wednesday, 10th week in Ordinary time
June 14, 2023: 2 Corinthians 3: 4-11; Matthew 5: 17-19
The earliest Christian communities were seen as contrast communities. They believed in commandments as did the Jews of their times, but their commandments were spelt differently. They knew there is condemnation, but their conditions of condemnation were formulated differently. They strove towards Righteousness but their righteousness was constituted differently. They had a splendour towards which they were drawn, but that was arrived at completely differently. It all boils down to another term: Covenant. The Christian community too focused on the Covenant, like the Jews of their times! But this was a new covenant, totally new!
The key to all the difference was LIFE... the Life that was given by the Spirit... the Life that Christ brought... the Life to the full! I have come that you may have life...sounds well in continuity with today's phrase in Mt 5:17. Every little thing that is done, believed, taught or learnt, has to be life-giving, life enhancing... taking us towards Life in all its fullness, the promise that Jesus the Good Shepherd brought into this world. That is the right Christ-ian worldview.
Hence the negligible corrollary would be: anything that enslaves, dehumanises, cripples life or tramples fullness, cannot be from the Spirit! The Spirit is life; anything from the Spirit is life-giving. That is what the new covenant is all about - about new life. It is a covenant of life, because it is the covenant of the Spirit and "the Spirit gives life"!