“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
will pass from the law,
until all things have taken place.
Moses commanded his people to, "hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to observe, that you may live, and may enter in and take possession of the land." By his life, death, and resurrection the Lord Jesus obeyed Moses and the Law of God. That was how he fulfilled the law. And it is what he teaches us.
Human traditions inevitably color and shade our understandings of what the Lord requires of us. We pore through the scriptures searching for understanding, and then we recall how these passages have been read, understood, and lived throughout the centuries.
As I understand kosher is how the Jews interpret an obscure passage, "You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk." It appears three times in the Torah: Exodus 23:19, 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21. Devout Jews cannot suppose a prohibition which is repeated twice should be dismissed as no longer relevant. Can we say, "Well, we don't live in the desert anymore; we neither keep goats nor eat their young; and so God's severe warning means nothing to us?"
Rather, they find a way to make it relevant in today's world. And so they keep separate pans and dishes for meat and milk, never allowing the one to touch the other. Is it a matter of life and death? Well, yes and no. No, in the sense that they're not worried about ordinary contamination; and yes, in the sense that they love the Lord and receive his holy Word with enormous gratitude.
Often, Christians and Catholics in a post-modern, post-Christian, and post-scientific world, with every confidence that we now in live in an anthropocentric world which we humans have created over the course of several millennia, decide that we can pick and choose what we believe and how we should worship God. If our ancestors scrupulously attended Church every Sunday, well, "the times have changed," and we need not be so scrupulous.
But who changed the times, and why? And was it with an awareness of God's sovereignty?
Lent calls us to remember who we are, where we live, when we live, and Who is still our God. Lent reminds us that we must ask God to show us how we should live today. How do we respond to the beggars at every corner in every major city? How do we accommodate today's aliens, orphans, and widows when their shear numbers threaten to overwhelm our systems? We are afraid to ask why there are so many but we dare not dismiss God's concern for them. Perhaps times have not changed!
Clearly, God has serious regard for those who are socially and economically vulnerable, and we should have the same regard. Saying. "They've brought it on themselves and their plight is no concern of mine" does not answer any prophet in the Old or New Testament.
Lent calls us to our senses,. We must follow the prodigal son from the pig sty to our Father's house, confess our sins, and do penance.
