Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Jesus introduces many new things in his Sermon on the Mount.
Nevertheless, he says, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill.
The new is the fulfillment of the old, not simply its replacement.
There were heretics in the early centuries of the Christian era who drew a sharp distinction between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament.
Marcion, for example, said that the Old Testament speaks of a God who is a judge, who is powerful and righteous, yes, but also choleric, cruel, volatile, and petty.
So he concluded that this God could not be the Father of Jesus Christ, who is exclusively kind.
Consequently, he rejected the Old Testament as irrelevant for Christians and was condemned for this and for other heretical teachings.
For Christ did not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them.
First of all, he fulfilled in his own person the prophecies and prefigurations found in the books of the law and the writings of the prophets, as well as other revelations transmitted orally.
The law of Moses had outward rites that foreshadowed inward realities.
Christ established spiritual worship, which is the reality foreshadowed by those ancient rites.
They prescribed many sacrifices, which prefigured various aspects of Christ's one perfect sacrifice.
Besides ceremonial law, the Mosaic law also expresses moral laws that are not abolished or replaced because they correspond to human nature.
Christ fulfills this part of the law by fulfilling it personally, leading a life completely without sin.
He also fulfills this part of the law in us, his mystical body, by making it possible with his grace for us to fulfill the moral law.
The Mosaic law served to make sin known, and this knowledge was to lead to repentance.
Christ gives us the sacraments that deliver from sin those who repent.
Furthermore, the sacraments give us the grace to avoid sin.
He fulfills the moral law also by insisting on its interior dimension, as we'll see tomorrow.
He fulfills it in addition by adding counsels to the precepts.
So, in many ways, in every way necessary, Christ fulfills the old law.
In Christ, we have the fullness of revelation. He is the word of God.
In him, God has said everything he has to say, so there will be no other revelation.
So, when Muhammad said that he was a prophet of God, wise Christians knew that this could not be true because it makes no sense for God to send a mere prophet to give another partial revelation when he has already said everything through his son.
There are indeed private revelations, such as those of Fatima and Lourdes, but these do not add to public revelation.
They only serve to remind us of things that do not receive enough attention, such as the temporal and eternal consequences of sin, and the need to do penance, also to save poor sinners.
Since in Christ we have a final revelation, it will never change until the end of the world.
Until heaven and earth pass away, my words will not pass away, our Lord says.
So, whoever thinks that the times have changed and that we can do without the law of Christ, or even without the law of Moses as Christ fulfills it, brings not improvement but apostasy.
Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
St. Paul speaks in the first reading of the superiority of the New Covenant.
The New Covenant is not of the letter but of the Spirit, and while the letter kills, the Spirit gives life.
This saying is true in multiple senses.
First, the letter of the old law condemned sin, and in this way killed those who did the evil things that the law condemned.
Having been told not to do them, they could no longer be excused by ignorance.
But the Spirit poured out abundantly in the sacraments of the New Covenant gives eternal life and makes it possible to observe the whole moral law as expressed in the Old and New Testament.
Second, even the letter of the New Testament can kill when it is understood too literally, while the Spirit gives life by revealing the true meaning of Scripture.
So if you hear, if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, and you cut off your hand because you've used it to sin, then the letter is killed.
But if you understand that you are to cut off a relationship with a person as dear to you as your right hand, because that relationship leads you to sin, then the Spirit has given life.
Now the old law was glorious because Moses' face shone so that the Israelites appeared to look at it.
And if the old law was glorious in this way, how much more glorious is the new law?
The old law had a ministry of condemning sin, but the new law has a ministry of conferring righteousness.
Clearly it is more glorious to make sinners just than to condemn their sins, even if that glory does not shine visibly.
The glory that was on Moses, Moses' face, faded with time.
And this was a sign of the fact that the old law was destined to be fulfilled by the new.
But the new law will never pass away.
And so its glory is not only greater than that of the old law, but it is also eternal.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.

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Ave Maria.