Gospel Commentary: Gift of God

By Fr. John J. Riley
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As we enter the last year of the second millennium following the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Holy Mother Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, sings her praise to God the Father in the Mystery of the Mass using the Gospel of St. Matthew.

In our present age we try to see Jesus, though "indistinctly ... as if in a mirror darkly." Our faith requires at least partial sight, so this year we’ll be gazing intently at the portrait of Jesus Christ presented by the master craftsman, Matthew. We’ll consider in this brief reflection the intention and vision of the man who wrote this Gospel, how the work of this evangelist enables us to catch a glimpse of the Christ, and how we might use this Gospel to know and to love Jesus more fully.

The Gospels tell us that a sinful tax collector, Lei by name, was called by Jesus to be one of His apostles. He took a second name (perhaps at this very moment in his life) — "Matthew" (which means "gift of God") and the former Roman collaborator from Capharnum lived and walked and broke bread with Jesus during the years of His public ministry, and listened intently to His words.

After Jesus ascended to His Father, His Holy Spirit continued to lead the Church to "the complete Truth," and men, inspired by this same Spirit, wrote down "what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for [our] eternal salvation" (Documents of Vatican II: "Dei Verbum," No. 19). Matthew most likely wrote his Gospel for other Jewish converts, and the most ancient scholars tell us he was the first of the four evangelists to compose his Gospel "while Peter and Paul were preaching their Gospel at Rome." Writing in Hebrew (or Aramaic) for people of Hebrew descent, Matthew was very much taken with proving that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures. He quotes the Old Testament dozens of times — and even editorializes: "this happened to fulfill what the Lord has said through the prophet..." (Mt 1:21; also 2:6, 2:18, 3:3, etc.).

Years of slaving over an accountant’s ledger left their mark on his literary style. Matthew, unsurprisingly, is usually more specific about numbers and coinage in his Gospel than his brother evangelists. And he likes order. An outline of Matthew’s Gospel reveals a carefully conceived structure — a series of discourses and events from the life of Jesus which the former tax collector deliberately arranges to suit his theological purpose, lined up with care and precision like entries in an accountant’s ledger.

Together with five long narrative sections, Matthew arranges five long discourses: the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7), the Missionary Sermon (chapter 10), the Parables of the Kingdom (chapter 13), the Sermon on the Church (chapter 18) and the Sermon on the end times (chapters 24 and 25). Some scholars have theorized that this organized presentation of Jesus’ words into five long discourses represents an attempt on Matthew’s part to portray Jesus as the New Moses, with Jesus’ five extended discourses paralleling Moses’ five books of the Torah (or "the Law") of the Old Testament.

Jesus’ "New Law" is forcefully presented in His Sermon on the Mount, beginning with the Beatitudes which comprise our Gospel for this Sunday. Having received the Law 1,200 years before in the thundering darkness at Sinai, the Jewish people had gravitated toward two extremes: on the part of some, sinful failure and a complete inability to remain faithful to the 613 precepts of the Sinai code. For others, an obsessive adherence to the letter of the Law surpassed only by an intense and profound blindness to its Spirit, which characterized the Pharisees (or "separated ones") who had constructed and embraced a rigid "cult of externality" — straining out the gnat, and swallowing the camel — entirely oblivious to the identity of the One they awaited, the Savior Who stood before them. Jesus, as Moses did before Him, ascended a mountain, and sitting (the posture of one who speaks with authority) began to teach the crowds. Beginning with the Beatitudes, He dismisses the cult of externality and invites His people to recognize and embrace a greater reality — the Kingdom of God within man.

In the weeks to come between now and Lent, we’ll be challenged by these words of Christ, not merely to be "basically good persons," but to be aware of our sinfulness and to seek to be saints — or to die trying. As one wise old Irish missionary priest has put it, "A saint is nothing more than a sinner who never stopped trying."

As we journey through the calendar year 1999 and encounter the readings of Matthew’s Gospel that comprise Liturgical Cycle A, perhaps we might do well to read his Gospel, right through and in its entirety. It’s funny how people who watch 20 hours of television a week and consume entire Tom Clancy novels, quail before the challenge offered by a work of about 30 pages (the length of Matthew’s gospel in the Revised Standard translation, Catholic Edition). Please consider taking a few hours to see Jesus through the inspired eyes of a "sinner who never stopped trying" — Matthew — and enjoy his Gospel, which is certainly "a gift of God."

Fr. Riley is associate pastor at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Warrenton and professor of Sacred Scripture at Christendom College in Front Royal.

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