GOSPEL REFLECTION, WEDNESDAY, 10TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, 10 JUNE 2026

Matthew 5:17-19:  We must understand clearly what Jesus meant when he condemned adherents of ‘The Law,’  the scribes and Pharisees (their name means ‘the Separated Ones),  who kept aloof from society in order to keep the Law strictly.  In Jewish religious thought and practice of Jesus’ time, ‘The Law’ could mean different but related things: the Ten Commandments only; or the first five Books of what we call the Old Testament; or ‘the Law and the Prophets,’ the whole of the Old Testament; or the law as the numerous rules and regulations developed by the scribes as oral law during the four or five centuries just before Jesus’ time.  When Jesus rejected the Law in today’s gospel he meant the latter -- the elaborate rules and regulation formulated and observed by the scribes and the Pharisees.  When Jesus promised ‘to fulfil,’ to bring to completion, he meant The Law and the Prophets as in our reading today, the whole of what we call the Old Testament scriptures, the only Bible he and his followers would have known.  He upheld, fulfilled and brought to completion all of it, even to the last detail.  It is the Law and the Prophets which foretell his coming as Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, the Lord. 

This means that it is our obligation and duty to know and revere to the extent we are able The Law and the Prophets beyond a passing reading or hearing of the Old Testament because all of it, to the last detail, tells who Jesus is.  The Gospel is deeply rooted in it; it records in detail exactly who Jesus is, his mission on earth, and who both Jesus and us as his followers are in relation to him, and to the Father, in the Holy Spirit.