10th week in ordinary time, Wed. June13, 2007

Dear Readers, please, use the blogspot for the readings the rest of June.
I will be in Pittsburgh and then on retreat with the Marianists of the
Province of the United States. Here is the internet blogspot

http://scripmed.blogspot.com

or scripmed@blogger.com

Scripture: II Corinthians 3:4-11. Psalm 99. Matthew 5:17-19. Lectionary
#361:

Jesus became one with humanity through his birth for he was born of Mary of
Nazareth, a Jewess. He explicitly tells us today in the Sermon on the
Mount that he identifies himself as an observer of the Torah both as a
faithful Jew and as a teacher. "Do not think I have come to abolish the
Torah and the Nebiim (the Law and the Prophets); I have come not to abolish
but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not
one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the Torah (the Law)
until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of
these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least
in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be
great in the kingdom of heaven." Jesus always is truthful--then and now.
So he is a doer of the commandments and a righteous teacher of the spirit
and letter of the TANACH (The Torah, the Prophets, the Writings). Like
Moses, Jesus is also a true prophet after the spirit of the text found in
Deuteronomy in chapter 18: 15-22. The central thought is found in verse 18
as God speaks to Moses, "I will raise up for them a prophet like you from
among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet,
who will speak to them everything I command. ...If a prophet speaks in the
name of the Lord, but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a
word that the Lord has not spoken."(Dueteronomy 18:22). In the most recent
book of Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, the Pope dialogues in a literary
way with Jacob Neusner, a rabbi who addressed this question in A Rabbi
talks withJesus. Both are very close in their interpretation about Jesus'
respect and attitude toward the Torah, but Neusner stops the comparison
when it comes to the divinity of Jesus. The chapter on the Beatitudes and
the Sermon on the Mount is a powerful tribute to the Jewish religion and is
worthwhile for future dialogue between Jews and Christians. The Jewishness
of the Gospel of Matthew is evident. Pope Pius XI had given us a helpful
insight into understanding our relationship with each other as Jew and
Christian when he wrote, "We are all spiritually Semites." Jesus' written
Bible was theTANACH (the acronym for the Torah, Prophets, and Writings).
We Christians will know Jesus better by realizing how much of the Hebrew
Scriptures are part of the New Testament and its witness to who Jesus of
Nazareth is. We need to know these divine revelatory words in the same
spirit in which Jesus lived them out and did them. Amen. See especially
chapter four of Benedict's book, especially from pages 99-127 which has the
subtitle "The Torah of the Messiah".