(Mt 5:17-37)
Abolish or bring to Completion [vv.17-19]
Religious criticized converts to the Faith for being transgressors and against the wealth of Tradition.
Thus while some emphasized salvation by Faith alone in Christ and not by works of Law, others did not accept the Spirit freedom that was increasingly manifested in those who began to believe in Jesus Messiah.
New, more radical currents were already desirous of leaving aside his history and his Person, to get rid of them, and take refuge in a generic, spineless independence.
Mt helps to understand the disagreement: the direction of the Arrow shot from Judaic Scriptures is the right one, but it has no unanimous and totally clear cue, nor the strength to reach the Target.
The evangelist harmonizes the tensions, emphasizing that authentic observance does not allow us to bracket the historical, real Christ - perhaps by remaining neutral or indifferent dreamers.
Without reductions or models, He makes Himself present in the facets of the most diverse currents of thought. He’s not a one-sided, nor an abstract binary.
New Words, ancient Words, and the Spirit who renews the face of the earth, are part of a unique Drawing.
And only in the Risen One does our harvest come to complete life - full aim of the Law - becoming forever.
First debt: a superior Justice [vv.20-26]
Mt helps disputants to understand the content of the ancient Scriptures and grasp the attitude of "continuity and cut" given to them by the Lord: «You have heard that [...] Now I say to you» (vv.21-22).
The ideal of ancient religiosity was to appear pure before God; Jesus brings out its objective: the superior Justice of the Love.
The splendor, beauty and richness of the Glory of the living God are not produced in observing, but in the possibility of manifesting Him Present.
The Life of God transpires into a world not of pure and sterilized phlegmatic disciples, but in a conviviality of differences that Resembles Him.
Revelation of equal dignity [vv.27-32]
In Semitic marriage norm, the woman was assessed as a patrimony of the husband: even in the First Testament the sin of adultery was valued as a sort of serious violation of the male’s right of property [as well, impurities of blood].
Jesus reveals the value of the person as such, and brings to the fore the innermost sense of the approaches and transgressions, wich harm and offend the existence of the weak.
He even introduces the announcement of equal dignity between man and woman.
Marriage is a community of love; not a union that can be dissolved by whim and material calculus.
The opportunism of bullies condemns the defenceless person - who then (abandoned) for a living will be condemned to suffer other violations of self (v.32).
With sharp words, the Lord recalls the need for a harsh intransigence towards every trivial deviation of selfishness, which humiliates the innocent without protections.
To save love and give it vigour, the Master also envisages painful amputations. Carrying out the gravest sacrifices can release the strong from his delirium.
In short, an attraction without self-giving does not express the person to the person; it’s the unripe fruit of immaturity and leads to alienation.
The woman - ie the unsteady and innocent, who loves more, and more seriously - is not a creature liable to mockery, nor reducible to possession, thing, consumer good, merely useful to arrogant man of the home.
The perfection of Gratis, the deficiency of the stools [vv.33-37]
Yes when it is yes, No when it is no. There is no need to give strength to trust: the theatrics of bombastic formulas only admit the conviction that “the other” cannot be fully trusted.
Total transparency in relationships does not need «stools» to support it. Good relations, the ideal of justice, and our whole life, come to perfection in a limpid manner.
Let’s get to the theological point: what counts for God is the Person, not his symbolic expressions or merits - fake props to the you-for-you, to be set out in the window to hijack it.
Face to face is worth the whole lot: far more than what sounds by ear, and much more than accounting than the woman and man have observed or not.
The Father is impressed by his creaturely masterpiece, not by performances, nor by the smokescreen of conformist expressions: rituals, acronyms, set phrases.
There is nothing higher than our Face. We do not have to improve except by his Gratuitousness, wich is far more reliable and effective than our not infrequently vain and homologising observances.
The power we have in dowry cannot even affect the natural color of a hair (v.36): this is the reality - behind the grand scenes that we put up to avoid admitting that... something is wrong.
The integrity that counts is quiet, transparent, spontaneous, forthright, sincere. Needless to make and repeat oaths, to deceive even God.
[6th Sunday in O.T. (year A), 15 February 2026]
