I love the first line of today’s first reading: “The love of Christ impels us…” More poignantly, that can be translated, “The love of Christ urges us on…” Saint Paul then talks in detail about how Christ’s love accomplished the work of death for all of us, so that our death doesn’t have to be the end of the story for us. That love of Christ urges us all on, impels us to lay down our lives for others, indeed it demands that we love in the same way as we are loved. That needs to be the theme of our life’s vocation, whatever form that vocation may take. It is the task of every authentic vocation to love others into heaven.
That’s been where the fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel has been taking us this week in ourGospel readings. Jesus says, “You have heard it said…” and then follows up with, “But I say to you…” On Thursday, murder, the fifth commandment, became much more urgent when Jesus insisted it encompassed anger, bigotry, and hatred. Today, the eighth commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” is more urgent when Jesus insists that the commandment demands devotion to the truth, not swearing a false oath certainly, but also living in such a way that swearing an oath at all is unnecessary. We who follow the Truth in the person of Jesus should never be in a position where our dedication to the truth is called into question.
So we cannot be those who “live your truth” as the pop culture commandment goes. Because we don’t have our own truth, we have Jesus, and that’s all the truth we need. And we are impelled, urged on in that truth, because that Truth is found in the love of Jesus Christ.
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