Interior Change
“But I say to you…” In the Old Testament, the word spoken to Moses on Mount Sinai was printed on tablets. In this moment, on the Mount of Beatitudes, Jesus is the Word of God. The Eternal presence is before the people establishing himself as a new Moses, heightening the already established law: “You shall not commit adultery.”
In Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body we hear, “Christ the Teacher urges us not to give such a human interpretation to the whole law and the individual commandments contained in it that it does not foster the justice willed by God the legislator: "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 5:20).” Jesus is speaking of an eternal truth. When we begin to see our actions through the lens of eternality, our actions reflect a participation in the Divine reality.
We begin attempts to stop our hand from sinning; we attempt to keep our eye from sinning. After much physical mortification, our willingness aligns with that of the Will of God. Our salvation is not individualized but collective. We begin to care for the salvation of others. We desire living directly in the heart of God. Our presence becomes salt and light. We begin making decisions based on the Glory of God and not based on fear or carnal desire. We form a new imagining, a Christian imagination, one of purity and childlikeness.
Forming Christian imagination is not easy at first. We can have some pretty tall weeds that we have cultivated in our interior life. Providentially, the Lord has left us pruning shears. One that has aided me over time is Scripture. Daily meditation on the word of God can aid in beginning the pruning process of our own imaginations. If your imagination is overcrowded a great place to start is with the Chosen Series or Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Bible in a year podcast.
From one with a constantly “overcrowded imagination” !