Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
They say that the times of change in the Church has to get with the times.
Today it's normal for people to live together without being married.
It's normal to divorce and remarry.
It's normal to have a partner of the same sex.
God's law was written thousands of years ago, and the world has changed.
But Jesus Christ, the truth in person, solemnly proclaims, “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.”
Now some parts of the old law have passed away because they spoke of things that have taken place.
The sacrifices of the old law foreshadowed the sacrifice of Christ, and it has now taken place.
Similarly, circumcision sought deliverance from original sin and membership in the covenant by looking forward to the shedding of Christ's blood for our deliverance, which began with his circumcision.
Now we enter the covenant by the circumcision of our hearts in baptism, mystically dying and rising with Christ.
The various laws regarding bodily purity were instituted to teach the purity of heart that we must have to approach the holy mysteries worthily.
All these parts of the old law regarded things that have taken place.
But the moral law, on the other hand, is perennially valid because it regards human nature, corresponds to human nature and to the vocation of man.
And this does not change.
It is the same in every time and place.
Christ brings means of grace that make it possible to fulfill the moral law with constancy and eliminate the hardness of heart, which led Moses to tolerate divorce.
In the context of the Sermon on the Mount, Christ also brings the moral law to fulfillment by insisting on its interior aspect.
This is an important difference between civil law and the gospel law, and indeed even the law of Moses.
The Pharisees and scribes misunderstood the law of Moses because they thought of it as being like civil law.
Civil law deals only with external actions.
For example, however much hatred and contempt a person may have in his heart, if he does not express it eternally, he cannot be fined or sent to jail.
But God sees the heart and condemns the man who hates even if the hatred remains within him and is never expressed in words or actions.
Love is the fulfillment of the law, and therefore hatred is a violation of the law, which says you shall love your neighbor as yourself, and this even in the old law.
So when it comes to the moral precepts of the law, Christ brings them to fulfillment by insisting on their interior dimension.
This makes the law more demanding, or at least seem more demanding, but Christ also gives us the grace to be able to keep it.
So while it may be more demanding objectively, it is easier to observe in practice because of the aids of grace that God offers.
Because Christ brought the law to perfection, there can be no further fulfillment or replacement of the gospel law until heaven and earth pass away.
Christ fulfilled and changed the law especially because he brought the reality that the old law foreshadowed.
The new law does not look forward to any fulfillment on this earth, but only to the new heavens and new earth that will come after the end of this world.
Therefore the law of Christ will last until heaven and earth pass away.
Christ is also the fullness of revelation, so while he could come and clarify the extent and proper sense of the moral precepts, correcting the interpretation of the Scribes and Pharisees, and also the Sadducees, no one could possibly come to correct Christ.
Any change proposed to his perfect law necessarily makes it a worse law.
For example, contraception makes sex about seeking pleasure.
When it's used outside of marriage, it facilitates adultery, and when it's used in marriage, it makes the marital act a selfish act, and thus makes divorce much more likely.
To allow divorce in remarriage makes marriage unstable, and so makes the family unstable, and thus makes the society, whose fundamental self is the family, also unstable.
So the sexual revolution, instead of producing human fulfillment, damages individuals and society so badly that it's hard for anyone to lead a fulfilling life.
So as Moses says in the first reading, careful observance of God's law gives evidence of wisdom and intelligence to the nations.
Inversely, neglect of God's law gives evidence of folly and stupidity.
The truth of what Moses says is demonstrated by history.
At the time of Christ, many pagans admired the law of Moses, because they saw that it corresponded to much that their philosophers had discovered with hard work.
So as the first reading points out, it is a privilege for us, as it was for the Jews to know God's law, to have all these things which would be difficult to discover on their own, or impossible to discover on their own, simply given to us by God as a gift.
The psalm emphasizes the same point.
He has proclaimed his word to Jacob, and his statutes and his ordinances to Israel.
He has not done thus for any other nation.
His ordinances he has not made known to them.
The gospel law is the foundation of the civilization of law, because it is the law of law.
This civilization recognizes human dignity, and enables us to reach a degree of intimacy with God unknown to the pagans.
It is therefore an even greater privilege for us to know the holy gospel than it was a privilege for the Jews to know their law, for through the gospel we can enter into an intimacy with God unknown even to the Jews.
The light of Christ is granted for the benefit of all mankind, as Isaiah prophesied.
It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Judah and restore the survivors of Israel.
I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
When St. Matthew described the beginning of Jesus' preaching, he pointed out that our Lord was fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy.
The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.
On those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death, light has arisen.
To some extent, we see the light of God's law influencing even non-Christian nations, learning from Western culture, things about human rights, for example.
So when Christianity teaches human dignity, and this is expressed in various statements of human rights, some of these are recognized, accepted also by non-Christian nations.
Christ's teaching about the love of neighbor led Christians to create the first hospitals and to create orphanages, and now institutions like this can be found in non-Christian areas as well.
But where Christian influence declines, these institutions become distorted and harmful.
On the model of true human rights, other rights are declared which do not correspond to the truth about human nature, but to the ideological goals of activists.
Hospitals and hospices continue to serve the sick and injured, but for profit rather than love.
And euthanasia and abortion come to be called health care, and thus doctors kill instead of healing.
Let us instead be wise and intelligent, living by God's law and teaching it, and thus building up the civilization of love to replace the dying civilization of self-gratification.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.