15 February 2026 -- 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Si 15:15-20; 1 Cor 2:6-10; Mt 5:17-37
HOMILY
After the Second Vatican Council, we had a revision of the Code of Canon Law in the Church, and then all religious institutes were invited to revise their constitutions. Similarly, it is not uncommon for a country to make amendments to its constitution.
Well! When we read today's Gospel, in which Jesus says several times, ‘You have heard...; but I say to you...’, our first impression may be that Jesus is simply making a few amendments to the Constitution of Israel or revising the Code of Canon Law of the Old Testament.
However, if we study Jesus' words carefully, we realize that he is demanding a much more radical change from his listeners. It is not a change in the law but in the relationship to the law - a change that requires a conversion of the heart and not of the law. Jesus does not establish a new legalism more demanding than that of the Pharisees; he replaces the demands of legalism with the much greater demands of love. He does not establish a new and more rigorous justice; he teaches the demands of love, which go far beyond what strict justice can require.
In our time, we have realized that we are collectively failing to respect the rights of several sectors of society, and so we have published various charters affirming the rights of women, for example, or those of children, or the disabled, etc. All of this is important and even necessary. But as long as we respect the new rights in the same way that we respected the old codes, we are still living under the Old Testament, and we risk ending up with a great deal of injustice.
Human justice consists in respecting various rights, as established by the conventions of a particular society. Thus, for example, in a culture where slavery was part of the structure of society, as was the case in the Roman Empire at the time of Christ and St. Paul, justice consisted in balancing the rights of slave owners with their obligations towards the slaves they owned. The slaves had no rights. In a capitalist society, justice consists in respecting the balance established between the rights of the owners of capital and those of the workers who make that capital profitable through their labor. In a socialist society, justice consists in respecting the balance established in that particular society between the rights of the state and those of the individuals who are its members. In each case, it is easy to end up with permanent forms of oppression, even when no legal rights have been violated.
Jesus does not attempt to specify any of these rights. Instead, he tells us: do not remain at this level. If justice demands that you give your coat, give your shirt as well. If justice gives you the right to demand an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth, simply forgive the one who has offended or harmed you. If the moral code of conduct forbids you from doing certain things, such as taking your neighbor’s wife, I ask you to watch even the desires of your heart.
This new teaching of Jesus concerning the law is a source of great insecurity – a very salutary insecurity. Indeed, if being good consists in not committing adultery, not killing, not demanding more than an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, not missing Mass on Sunday... I can easily feel secure. I can periodically check whether I am good or not. And if I have sinned, I know exactly when, where and how. This gives me a great sense of security. It is the security of the Pharisees. Yet Jesus said, "Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. "
But if being faithful to Jesus' call consists in purity of intention, in loving my enemy; if it consists in always giving more than is asked of me, in repairing the relationship between myself and my brothers when it is broken – then I live in that blessed and constant insecurity which consists in the awareness of always being called to something much greater than what I am at present and what I am doing. Insecurity is then synonymous with poverty.
It is with this poverty of heart, in the attitude of children still learning to walk, that we will now approach the altar, finding a very authentic security, not in our own righteousness, which we know we do not have, but in the righteousness of God, knowing that he is rich in mercy and compassion.
Armand Veilleux