\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Is the law written upon your heart- Jesus law, the Christian way of life?\u00c2\u00a0 What does that even mean- to have the law written on your heart?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
For the covenant that the Lord gave to Moses, the Israeli’s were required to keep the Jewish Law.\u00c2\u00a0 The Law was embodied in the ten commandments, which were written in stone.\u00c2\u00a0 The whole law was derived from these commandments, and was taught to the people.\u00c2\u00a0 This still happens today- we are taught the written law.\u00c2\u00a0 We are taught the catechism, which draws on\u00c2\u00a0 the fullness of the written revelation of God, the Bible; and what has been revealed as the traditions of the Church.\u00c2\u00a0 And that is a good thing- to know the fullness of God’s law.\u00c2\u00a0 But all of this is knowledge of the law- to know what is right and wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 But a key to Jesus mission was to assure that the law was written within us, upon our hearts.\u00c2\u00a0 And that is different from knowledge of the law.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Notice that in today’s Gospel, Peter “knows” who Jesus really is.\u00c2\u00a0 Peter says: “You are Christ, son of the living God”.\u00c2\u00a0 This is not something he could have learned from scholars of the Mosaic Law.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, it was a “sense of knowing” that came from his heart.\u00c2\u00a0 It was something revealed to Peter by God, \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It was a feeling within Peter that came to him as a result of all of the experiences he had with Jesus.\u00c2\u00a0 It became a “knowing” that was deep within him.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the law is written in your heart, it can be said that you have that “sense of knowing”.\u00c2\u00a0 It is the light that comes on within you when you recognize the truth, when everything makes sense; it is that little voice inside of you that then moves you in new directions; and it is what your conscience tells you should not do when you are tempted.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Notice also that Jesus validated Peter’s “knowing” of the truth.\u00c2\u00a0 How wonderful that must have been for Peter!\u00c2\u00a0 But then something happened that contrasted strongly with that validation.\u00c2\u00a0 Because at the end of the Gospel, Jesus words are very stern, calling Peter a Satan.\u00c2\u00a0 Jesus accuses Peter of thinking as human beings do rather than as God does.\u00c2\u00a0 We can have the same problem.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes we have a “knowing” of God’s law, God’s will, in a situation.\u00c2\u00a0 But when it comes down to living in the real world, we think as human beings, and we can be an obstacle to God’s will.\u00c2\u00a0 We can have a problem putting what is written in our hearts into action: the call to a vocation; helping to meet the needs of a family member or friend; a sense of forgiveness for a wrong done to us; and the recognition and acceptance of suffering.\u00c2\u00a0 It is in those situations that we need to remember this advice from our Psalm:\u00c2\u00a0 “My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit, a heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.” \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Because that’s what it means to have the law written upon our hearts.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00c2\u00a0 Thursday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time Jer 11: 31-34; Math 16: 13-23 Dc. Larry Brockman Is the law written upon your heart- Jesus law, the Christian way of life?\u00c2\u00a0 What does that even mean- to have the law written on your heart?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 For the covenant that the Lord gave to Moses, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}