Pre-feast of Theophany. Our Holy Father Sylvester, Pope of Rome.
Hebrews 12:25-26; 13:22-25; Mark 10:2-12.
Read Mark 10:2-12
Christ is born! Glorify Him!
Today’s gospel offers two interesting lessons about how Christians can understand the Old Testament. First, in Jesus’ comment contrasting Moses’s instruction about divorce with God‘s original intent for marriage, we see how much of the Old Testament law is provisional. This gives Christians a good insight into why we no longer observe most of the ritual instructions of the mosaic law. They aren’t all given because of the hardness of human hearts, but many of them may have been intended for use only for a certain period of time, in response to a particular circumstance that is not intended to endure. This is why the apostle Paul calls the law a teacher, something akin to a slave whose job was to give a pupil his initial lessons while he was still young. In the same way, the Old Testament law points beyond itself to Christ.
The other lesson that struck me today, when reading today’s gospel, is how Jesus expands the idea of what counts as ethical behavior by expanding the definition of adultery. According to the Old Testament, and rabbinic interpretations of it, adultery, strictly speaking, referred to a married woman engaging in sexual relations with someone other than her husband. According to this way of thinking, a married man who slept with someone other than his wife was not actually committing adultery. Yet in today’s gospel, Jesus says that a man who divorces his wife and marries another woman commit adultery against her. He is expanding the law beyond its provisional, contingent context, and showing how the principles it contains are universal. Jesus is the fulfillment of the law, he gives it its true meaning, and he reveals to us what it really means to live according to the law of God.