Today,
Jesus goes on commenting the Commandments. The Israelites had a great
respect for the name of God, a fearful veneration, for they knew that
names refer to persons, and God deserves all respect, all honor and
all glory, by thought, word and deed. This is why —bearing in
mind that swearing is to place God as witness to the truth of what we
are saying— the Law commanded them: «Do not break your
oath; an oath sworn to the Lord must be kept» (Mt 5:33).
But Jesus comes to perfect the Law (and, therefore, to perfect us too
by following the Law), and goes a step further: «Do not take
oaths. Do not swear by the Heavens (...), nor by the earth (...)»
(Mt 5:34). We cannot actually say that to swear is bad, per
se, but to make an oath legitimate a few conditions are needed first,
such as a fair, grave and serious cause (for instance, a lawsuit),
and that your oath be true and good.
But
the Lord says even more: «Say yes when you mean yes and say no
when you mean no» (Mt 5:37). That is, He invites us to
live in truth on every instance, to conform our thinking, our words
and our deeds to the truth. But, the truth is what? This is the great
question, already formulated in the Gospel, during the judgment
against Jesus, in Pilate's own words, which so many thinkers,
throughout time, have been trying to answer to. The Truth is God.
Whoever lives by pleasing God, by abiding by his Commandments, lives
in Truth. The Rector of Ars says: «The reason why so few
Christians act with the exclusive purpose of pleasing God is because
they are immersed in the most terrible ignorance. O God, how many
good deeds are lost for Heaven!». It would be good to ponder
over it.
We
must develop ourselves, to read the Gospel and the Catechism.
And afterwards, we must live by what we have learnt.
