In the Gospel, the people are amazed that Jesus spoke with authority in his teaching,
not like the scribes who taught however they taught, without authority.
They're trying to maybe just impress people with their knowledge.
But Jesus speaks with authority.
You must do what I command you to do.
And that's what he said to the demons who were possessing people, and they obeyed.
And yet men, of course, don't always obey the commands of our Lord,
especially the commands of Jesus Christ, which are really perfect.
We have to love our enemies.
We have to love our brothers and sisters as Jesus loved us.
We have to be perfect.
We are given also counsels and set before us a perfect law, the example of Jesus Christ.
We have the Beatitudes, which are for the perfect, for those who are striving to be perfect.
And there are counsels that Jesus gives us that we don't have to follow.
Of course, those who choose to.
Those who renounce marriage, those who choose to sell everything that they have and give to the poor.
These are counsels for those who want to be perfect.
But we all call to perfection, and our Lord gives us this law of perfection,
which wasn't for the people of the Old Testament who were given the minimum to do.
They received the Ten Commandments and the law of Moses,
and a lot of it was just to keep them from doing anything.
They were committing even really worse things.
So they were to an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
They were allowed to divorce their wives so that they probably wouldn't kill them.
They were given commands that put restrictions on them so that they wouldn't go really crazy.
Like those who...
don't have any civilization at all.
So the law of Moses really was designed to prevent them from doing worse things.
But our Lord's law is a law of perfection, a law of holiness,
a law that we should follow with submission, with obedience, with docility,
with eagerness to adhere to everything,
so that we can be truly holy and perfect, to please God, and to be what we are called to be.
So this law, this authority that Jesus gives to us is for our good.
And if we don't submit ourselves to it, we become bad.
So we don't want to have that freedom to do whatever we want.
We want to be subject to authority.
We want to have restrictions because we're all children who wander away and do things that are harmful to us.
We're all children until the day we die,
until we get to heaven, where we will have
the light of God
to keep us from wanting to do anything bad.
So we want to have restrictions, we want to have obligations, we want to have family,
we want to have religious life, we want to have...
those who...to have superiors who keep us in check.
We want to have these
parameters to keep us in order.
us from sin and from evil and from our our selfish tendencies our tendency to do bad we want to follow
the authority that jesus gives us in the gospel the authority of men that represent god and we
want to have that humble heart that obedient heart which will gain a gain for us so many rewards and
keep us from sin and help us to to live a life of holiness
you