Fulfillment of the Law

[Red Knight]

I am seeking some good Catholic clarification of the meaning of the Fulfillment of the Law as described in Matthew 5:17-20. Please assist.

Red Knight

[phatcatholic]

[quote name='Red Knight' date='Aug 7 2005, 05:26 AM']I am seeking some good Catholic clarification of the meaning of the Fulfillment of the Law as described in Matthew 5:17-20.  Please assist.

Red Knight
[right][snapback]675788[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]
your wish is my command

from the navarre commentary:[list][b]17-19. [/b]In this passage Jesus stresses the perennial value of the Old Testament. It is the word of God; because it has a divine authority it deserves total respect. The Old Law enjoined precepts of a moral, legal and liturgical type. Its moral precepts still hold good in the New Testament because they are for the most part specific divine-positive promulgations of the natural law. However, ou rLord gives them greater weight and meaning. But the legal and liturgical precepts of the Old Law were laid down by God for a specific stage in salvation history, that is, up to the coming of Christ; Christians are not obliged to observe them (cf. Summa theologiae, I-II, q. 108, a. 3 ad 3).

The law promulated through Moses and explained by the prophets was God's gift to his people, a kind of anticipation of the definitive Law which the Christ or Messiah would lay down. Thus, as the Council of Trent defined, Jesus not only "was given to men as a redeemer in whom they are to trust, but also as a lawgiver whom they are to obey" (De iustificatione, can. 21).

[b]20. [/b]"Righteousness": see the note on Matthew 5:6. This verse clarifies the meaning of the preceding verses. The scribes and Pharisees had distorted the spirit of the Law, putting the whole emphasis on its external, ritual observance. For them exat and hyper-detailed but external fulfilment of the precepts of the Law was a guarantee of a person's salvation: "If I fulfill this I am righteous, I am holy and God is duty bound to save me." For someone with this approach to sanctification it is really not God who saves: man saves himself through external works of the Law. That this approach is quite mistaken is obiious from what Christ says here; in effect what he is saying is: to enter the Kingdom of God the notion of righteousness or salvation developed by the scribes and Pharisees must be rejected. In other words, justification or sanctification is a grace from God; man's role is one of cooperating with that grace by being faithful to it. Elsewhere Jesus gives the same teaching in an even clearer way (cf. Lk 18:9-14, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector). It was also the origin of one of St Paul's great battles with the "Judaizers" (see Galatians 2 and Romans 2-5).
[/list]more to come later........

pax christi,
phatcatholic

[Laudate_Dominum]

[phatcatholic]

here is the note on Mat 5:6 that was referenced in this previous commentary:[list][b]6. [/b]The notion of righteousness (or justice) in Holy Scripture is an essentially religious one (cf. notes on Matthew 1:19 and 3:15; Romans 1:17; 1:18-32; 3:21-22 and 24). A righteous person is one who sincerely strives to do the Will of God, which is discovered in the commandments, in one's duties of state in life and through one's life of prayer. Thus, righteousness, in the language of the Bible, is the same as what nowadays is usually called "holiness" (1 Jn 2:29; 3:7-10; Rev 22:11; Gen 15:6; Deut 9:4).

As St Jerome comments (Comm. on Matthew, 5, 6), in the fourth Beatitude our Lord is asking us not simply to have a vague desire for righteousness: we should hunger and thirst for it, that is, we should love and strive earnestly to seek what makes a man righteous in God's eyes. A person who genuinely wants to attain Christian holiness should love the means which the Church, the universal vehicle of salvation, offers all men and teaches them to use--frequent use of the sacraments, an intimate relationship with God in prayer, a valiant effort to meet one's social, professional and family responsibilities.
[/list]pax christi,
phatcatholic

Edited August 7, 2005 by phatcatholic