in CCC 576: Jesus’ attitude towards the Law, towards the Temple, and towards faith in the One God. As you can see, these are taken up as the main headings following these paragraphs, and we will spend time on each area over the next few days.
We sometimes express doubt by saying that a message or an account sounds “too good to be true.” In each of the areas of conflict in Jesus’ life, those who opposed him were facing a reality that must, to them, have seemed too good to be true. God acted “far beyond all expectation” (422) in sending his own beloved Son. Because of who he is, Jesus sums up and fulfills all of the “institutions of the Chosen People” (576). Jesus is the priest, prophet, and king; he is the true Temple and the real sacrifice; he is the giver of the new Law, the meaning of every feast and celebration; he is the revealer of what it means to say that God is One, as a Trinity of Persons in an eternal communion of love.
When Jesus came, sent from his Father, he acted in ways that made sense in the light of his identity and mission, but they were “far beyond all expectation” and so-called for a decision on the part of those who witnessed or experienced them. The Catechism lists some of his actions, signs of “contradiction” (Lk 2:34; CCC 575), that led to conflict (574). He called for a radical conversion in the light of these signs of the in-breaking kingdom he was establishing. The Catechism notes how understandable it was, in the face of “so surprising a fulfillment of the promises” (591), that many rejected him. In Jesus, they experienced the limitless nature of God’s love.
Day 80
CCC 577-582
Jesus and the Law
Jesus will not allow us to oppose law and grace, or the New Testament against the Old Testament. Jesus is not a “soft option” set against a stern, unyielding Old Testament law. He does not overthrow what has come before. He fulfills it, completes it, strengthens it, builds on it. Jesus keeps all the promises made in the time of the Old Covenant. He is the “Yes” of God (see 2 Cor 1:20), the Confirmation of the truth of what his Father has been revealing gradually by stages (see 53, 65).
The Sermon on the Mount — the collection of Jesus’ teachings gathered in Matthew 5-7 — both affirms and radically deepens what was given to the People of God in the Old Testament. Jesus wants for us not only the good action but the pure motivation, not only what the hand can give but what the heart can release. His teaching is truly “radical” in the etymological sense of “going to the root.” We have already seen that in biblical and Christian teaching the heart is central to an understanding of the person (368, 478; see also 2562-2563).
Jesus not only affirms the goodness of the whole Law, but keeps it fully and in every respect (578-580). In Jesus, God the Son lives the very Law that has its origin and source in him. He lives it in and through the human nature he assumed. Through his words and actions he shows what the true Law looks like.
The conflicts over the Law lay in Jesus’ claim to be its authoritative interpreter, in both word and deed (581). As the divine Son he taught with absolute authority, correcting, where needed, certain human interpretations that were current, especially in the area of laws on the Sabbath and on dietary regulations (581-582). For example, he taught the true “pedagogical meaning” (582) of the dietary law through explaining what it is to be truly clean of heart before God.
Day 81
CCC 583-586
Jesus and the Temple
Jesus is not only the fulfillment of the Law. He is also the fulfillment, in his own Person, of all of the worship of Israel. Jesus had zeal for the Temple (584); it is “my Father’s house” (see Jn 2:16-17). Nonetheless, the physical Temple was only ever a dim image of his own Body, and all of the sacrifices offered in the Temple only ever a poor shadow of his perfect sacrifice of obedient love to the Father for all mankind. Upon Christ’s coming, “Types and shadows have their ending,” as Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote. As in the case of the Law, Jesus did not overthrow the sacrifices and worship, the feasts and holy seasons of the Old Covenant. He came to perfect and fulfill them (583-584), although — as in the case of the Law — the meaning of his words and actions were distorted (585).
Jesus refers to himself as the true Temple of God because all worship now takes place “in him” and “through him” (586; see the footnote reference to Jn 2:21). He is the one over whom the cloud of God’s presence, his shekinah, rests (see Mk 9:7), and it is through his sacrifice of love that access to the Father is made possible (Mt 27:51).
For ourselves, we are now being “built” into the Temple of Christ’s Body. Each of us is placed as a jewel (Rv 21:18-21), a “living stone” (1 Pt 2:5), in the new Temple of Christ, in which the Holy Spirit dwells as our true life (Eph 2:21; see CCC 1695), teaching us to pray in the Son, as members of his Body united to him, to the Father (see 797).
Day 82
CCC 587-591
Jesus and Israel’s Faith in the One God and Savior
With this third element in the conflict between Jesus and some of the religious figures of his time, we reach what the Catechism calls the “real stumbling-block” for those who opposed him: his claim to be able to forgive sins (587). The scandal of Jesus’ actions was based on the fact that “only God can forgive sins” (Mk 2:7; CCC 589, see also 1441). While I can forgive a person those sins committed against myself, no one else has the right to do this; no one, that is, except God, to whom I belong. Likewise, I cannot forgive a person’s sins committed against a third party; again, only God can do this, for all of us belong to him.
God alone can forgive everything since all sin flows from disobedience towards God and expresses distrust in his goodness (397). Jesus never contradicted this fundamental truth. He never claimed that anyone other than God could declare sin to be forgiven; he simply exercised this divine authority himself — “Your sins are forgiven” (Mk 2:10) — and left it to his hearers to draw the conclusion as to his union with the Father (589). His divinity was further expressed in the fact that he gave to his apostles this same authority to forgive sins (Jn 20:21-23). Clearly, only one who himself had the power and the authority to forgive sins could share this with others.
The forgiveness of sins, then, is described in the Catechism as the “divine work par excellence” (587). An appreciation of this phrase from the Catechism, together with our understanding of the meaning of the name “Jesus” as “God saves” (see 430-432), helps us to realize that the forgiveness of our sins and our liberation from evil is the focus of Christ’s work in our own lives (see 1741).
Day 83
CCC 595-598
The Trial of Jesus
Today’s reading is particularly hard-hitting. The answer to the question “Who was responsible for Christ’s crucifixion?” is quite simply, “I am responsible, because I sin, and Christ died to rescue me from my sin.” All sinners collectively are responsible for Christ’s death.
The section begins by noting that if we seek to answer that question, “Who was responsible for Christ’s crucifixion?” purely on the level of history, looking at the various actors during the trial and death of Jesus, we face a certain “historical complexity” (597). Some religious authorities in Jerusalem clearly wished
