The Holy Apostle Hermas; the Holy Martyr Hermes (138-61)
Romans 1:18-27; Matthew 5:20-26.
Read Matthew 5:20-26
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Today’s reading begins with strong words from Jesus: “Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 5:20). What was the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees? To them, one was deemed righteous by following the letter of the law. If you followed all the rules, then you would be viewed as acceptable to God. However, nobody could ever follow all the rules. Humans constantly broke the law. St. James recognized this as he wrote: “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all” (Jas. 2:10). St. Paul, recognizing the righteousness that comes from Christ, announces that: “Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed . . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:20-21; 23-24). We are not bound by Jewish law, but we walk in freedom and live by faith. We are made righteous by our faith in Christ and everything He has done for us.
We know Christ taught us to forgive our enemies, but in today’s reading, He also reveals the importance of letting go of anger and reconciling with others. He even teaches the importance of being reconciled to your brother before bringing a gift to God at the altar. It is more difficult to recognize this in modern practice, but it is true that every time we pray the Divine Liturgy, the bread and wine carried to the altar during the Cherubic Hymn are our gifts we set before God. Although you might have not directly baked that bread or fermented that wine (or maybe you did!), your contribution to the church is what makes that offering of bread and wine possible. It is important that we are mindful of the relationships in our lives and seek to reconcile with others as quickly as we can. Human forgiveness is not easy and might not happen in a single instant, but we need to be mindful to make the decision to let go of anger and always forgive. God forgives us our trespasses, and so we must “forgive those who trespass against us” as we pray in the Our Father, lest we suffer the same fate as the man in the parable who was forgiven an immense debt by his king but refused to forgive the small debt of his own servant (see Mt. 18:21-35).