Root causes

As I continued to reflect on the Gospel of Matthew today (Matthew 5:27-32), Jesus was preaching to His disciples about moral teachings in Jewish Law.  This section of the Gospel according to Matthew is known as the “antitheses”, where Jesus names a biblical teaching and not only does He express agreement with it but He also goes a step further and invites His disciples to go deeper into the spirit of that moral teaching: “You have heard that it was said…, But I say to you…”  These “antitheses”, aren’t really so, since Jesus doesn’t express an opposition to the Jewish Law, like the word antithesis suggests, but an invitation to go further into the spirit of that Law, which had been given by God as a covenant with God’s people, Israel. 

Jesus in the particular passage I reflected on today brings up adultery, an issue that was probably very relevant and imminent for the community around Matthew.  Jesus explores the relationship between adultery and divorce and lust and basically tells His disciples that there’s no need for a physical act to sin, but a mere lustful look or thought is adulterous.  Jesus invites us not to get caught up in the letter of the law, but to go a step further, a step deeper into the spirit of the law and reflect on which is the root of adultery.  Jesus suggests it is lust.

Earlier in this chapter of Matthew, Jesus talks about murder being rooted in anger, and in verses following this passage, Jesus talks about swearing falsely being rooted in engaging in oaths altogether.  Sin isn’t just the external, the physical, what other people see, but our own internal driving forces, our motivations.  Jesus invites us to go to the root of our sin, to go into ourselves and pray for the grace of being able to find out what the root or roots of our shortcomings, weaknesses, and sins are.  

And in thanksgiving and humility, knowing that we’re deeply and unconditionally loved by our Creator God, to pray and put the means necessary towards being more loving, since, like Saint Augustine puts it “…from this root (love) can nothing spring but what is good”.