2018-2-6

朋友们，在今天的福音中，耶稣揭露法利塞人的伪善，这些法利塞人把自己对法律的解释强加于人。我们要记住，首批基督徒和首批基督文献作者都是犹太人，或至少自小受犹太思想熏陶。他们都以《圣经》来解释耶稣。

 

耶稣自身是个虔诚的犹太人，《圣经》中的主题和观念对祂来说不可或缺。祂表明自己不是要破坏法律和先知，而是两者都要成全。

 

祂想方设法要克服所有在实质上分裂以色列的社会和宗教习俗，并揭露它们的虚伪。祂向所有人伸出援手：富人和穷人、健康者和病患者、圣人和罪人。祂代表了以色列的恭顺：“因为我从天降下是为执行派遣我来者的旨意。 ”“我的食物就是承行派遣我者的旨意。”

 

Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who have imposed their interpretation of the Law on the Israelites. Keep in mind that the first Christians and the writers of the first Christian documents were all Jews, or at least people formed by a Jewish thought world. They made sense of Jesus in terms of what were, to them, the Scriptures.

 

Jesus himself was an observant Jew, and the themes and images of the Holy Scriptures were elemental for him. He presented himself as the one who would not undermine the Law and the Prophets but fulfill them.

 

All of those social and religious conventions that had effectively divided Israel, he sought to overcome and expose as fraudulent. He reached out to everyone: rich and poor, healthy and sick, saints and sinners. And he embodied the obedience of Israel: "I have come only to do the will of the one who sent me." "My food is to do the will of my heavenly Father."

 

2018-2-7

朋友们，在今天的福音中，耶稣解释恶行发自内心。《圣经》经常提到“心”。这个“心”指的是自我的核心、我们最深的中心、思想和行为的发源地。天主想穿透我们的心，从而成为我们灵魂的中心。

 

但人心有着可怕的黑暗。天主按照自己肖像造了我们，但罪恶可以把这个肖像扭曲得面目全非。我们的教理清楚讲授原祖违命的糟糕真理，这个真理的证据可以在罪恶的谜团中看到，这一点我们无法置之不理、视同儿戏、诸多辩解。我们都有能力做出阴险邪恶的行为。我并不好，你也一样。

 

我们的心是否硬得连天主也无法进入？我们心里对天主的恩宠是否有着深深的抵抗？

 

Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus explains that sinful behavior flows from within our hearts. How often the Bible speaks of the "heart." By that it means the core of the self, the deepest center of who we are, that place from which our thoughts and actions arise. God wants to penetrate that heart, so that he is the center of our souls.

 

But there is something terribly black in the human heart. We are made in the image and likeness of God, but that image can be so distorted by sin as to be barely recognizable. Our faith clearly teaches the awful truth of the fall, and we see the evidence of it in the mystery of sin, which is not to be ignored, not to be trifled with, not to be rationalized away. We are all capable of dark and evil acts. I’m not okay and neither are you.

 

Have our hearts become hardened, so that God cannot get in? Is there a deep resistance in us to grace?