6th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2026
Ecclesiasticus 15:15-20 1 Corinthians 2:6-10 Matthew 5:17-37
The opening words of our first Reading today really jump out at us: “If you wish, you can keep the commandments, to behave faithfully is within your power.” This is one of the chief passages in the Bible stressing our own free-will. It comes in the Book of Ecclesiasticus or Sirach, which was composed towards the end of the age of the prophets and promises of coming salvation and when this era ended the Jewish people relied on wise sayings from various sources. These wise sayings were collected by Ben Sira.
The people learned that, of their own free will, they could choose good or evil. God called them to respond to the law given to Moses by a free act of love. When the Jewish people heard Jesus speak they, understandably, feared that the foundation of all that they believed in was under threat.
But when Jesus addresses the Law in his Sermon on the Mount he deliberately begins by saying “Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish them but to complete them.” Jesus, of course, respected and valued the Law given to Moses and would not change it one ’dot’. He wanted to enhance that Law and He wished that people would go beyond the letter of the law and be guided by what is new and what comes from heaven. All the words and teachings of the Law and the Prophets of old pointed towards the Messiah to come. The Messiah was now among them and presented to them what is the new Law and the fulfilment of the Prophets.
In the Gospel Reading today Jesus shows that he is well acquainted with the Laws and, to the astonishment of those listening, he proclaims ‘But I say to you’ claiming greater authority and greater understanding of the law. This is the first time in his ministry that Jesus hints at his divinity. It proclaims that the Son of God is among you and, so, the Law of Moses, sacred as it was, has been overtaken, completed, fulfilled.
In claiming his divine authority over the Law Jesus makes adjustments or corrections and each correction has its own character. The first is about enmity and the sixth about love. About enmity, it is not enough merely to forgo violent injury; we must expel enmity from our hearts, positively seeking reconciliation, whether the offence is our fault or not. About lust, it is similarly not enough to forego acts of lust; we must not even harbour such thoughts in our hearts. About truth, it is not enough to keep a legal oath; we must be people whose every word can be trusted.
The teaching of Jesus and his clarification of the new law can be daunting at first sight. But the assurances given by Him to those who are honest - those who say ‘Yes’ when they mean yes and those who say ‘No’ when they mean no – are repeated by Paul in our second Reading today when he tells us that we have been given ‘the hidden wisdom’ which will lead us to ‘what no eye has seen and no ear has heard, things beyond our minds, all that God has prepared for those who love him.’
We rejoice with the words of our Psalm today: ‘They are happy who follow God's law’!