The Burden of the Law

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator

Today's Gospel passage finds Jesus instructing the people to obey, but not to imitate, the Jewish leadership. He accuses them of not practicing what they preach or, in the more modern parlance, of not walking the talk. He also accuses them of laying heavy burdens on the backs of the people and providing them with no help in carrying that burden.

The burden to which Jesus is referring is the burden of the Law, sometimes referred to as the Covenant of Sinai. All of us who were schooled in the catechism know the Ten Commandments of the covenant. What we will probably never memorize are the 613 commandments that were developed from those ten. In the Gospel, Jesus preaches that the two greatest commandments are quite simple: Love God; love your neighbor. Yet every scholar of the Torah and of the documents which interpret the Torah knew that there were no fewer than 613 commandments that were written down by the Jewish leaders. This was indeed a heavy burden. They literally made life impossible for people of meager means who lived on a subsistence diet. One example is that of the Israelite shepherd. Because he lived in the fields with his flocks, a shepherd was unable to keep all of the various dietary and ritual rules that filled page after page of the codes of commandments.

Jesus does not tell people to ignore these laws. However, Jesus always places people ahead of strict interpretation of the Law. So in his preaching to his disciples and to the crowds, Jesus encourages them to do what they can to fulfill their covenant obligations, but to also help and support one another in their mutual quest to live as children of the covenant. It is a reminder that is very apropos for our day.