"Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (Mt. 5.20)
Well, isn't that peachy?
I don't know about you, but that is not exactly the most reassuring line from the Gospels, but it is what we read at Mass today (the readings for today can be found here). The key here is that Jesus had just stated that He had come not to do away with the Law of Moses but to fulfil the purpose of the Law of Moses. St. Paul spills a lot of ink about that subject, basically stating that the Law's primary goal was to show what was righteousness and how we could never measure up. However, when Jesus speaks of righteousness, he speaks of being the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the city on the hill. One may understandably be a bit confused.
The key to this, we find in Isaiah, indeed, in all the Prophets. In today's selection Isaiah relates God's complaint that everyone seems to have gotten the form down just fine, but the substance is lacking. Everyone seems to have the right prayers, the right rituals, the right readings (kudos, that's not easy), but the spirit behind them is totally bankrupt. What good are the right prayers if we're not also feeding the hungry? What good are the correct rituals if we not only do not seek shelter for the homeless but make it so they cannot get shelter? What good are daily Bible readings or the proper passages for the service of the day or hour if we do nothing to right the wrongs of the world? Absolutely nothing; these become dark shadows of what might have been, rather than the blinding light of the kingdom of heaven. In fact, it is not the rites and readings that are the glory of the kingdom of heaven, but the mercies shown to the poor, the downtrodden, and the disadvantaged.
I for one fall flat...I suspect, judging from what I see in the world around me in this "Christian" nation, that I am not the only one. In fact, Isaiah, Paul, and Our Lord indict us in this land for being no better than the scribes and Pharisees, getting their brand of righteousness but never exceeding it.
We are in what is the pre-Lenten season, those last two and a half weeks of Ordinary Time before Lent begins. Now is the time to begin to order our lives toward showing mercy to others as we order our lives to begin the discipline of Lent. Rather than wracking our brains for two and a half weeks figuring out what to give up, maybe it is better we wrack them figuring out what to take on.
Artwork is The Seven Corporal Works of Mercy by Meester van de Levensbron (“karinvogt”, CC BY-SA 2.0) Wikimedia Commons