Love at Second Sight

Loving Jesus by knowing the two Testaments

06/23/2020

Matthew 7:6, 12-14 Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you to pieces. “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the Law and the Prophets. “Enter through the narrow gate; or the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.”

I am not a big believer in love at first sight. Why? Well, because I am a big believer in the ancient maxim “you cannot love that which you do not know.” Let me explain. When you fall in love at first sight, you only love the surface of the person, not the heart, the bones and sinew, which is the real, flesh and blood person. Every day that I work in the marriage tribunal with annulment cases, I see people who fell in love at first sight, they have the fairy tale wedding. But that love didn’t last. Why? Well, as the years went by in their marriage, they really got to know each other, including their faults and failings, and they fell out of love. You cannot love that which you do not know – at least not for very long.

That holds true whether we’re talking about your spouse or about your Savior. That is, you cannot say you love Jesus without knowing Jesus. That conviction inspired St. Paul to write in Phil. 3:8, “I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Not many could say they knew the Lord better than the great apostle to the Gentiles, St. Paul. The more Paul knew Jesus, the more he loved Jesus.

So, how do we get to know Christ better? One excellent way is to study Scripture. In his commentary on Isaiah, St. Jerome famously wrote: “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” Notice Jerome wrote that comment while reflecting on the Old Testament book of Isaiah. To know Christ, therefore, we must study the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. Sometimes we might think: who wants to know the blood-thirsty God of the Old Testament, who wants wars and killing, when we have the merciful, meek and mild Jesus of the New Testament? Such a statement only reveals our “ignorance of Scripture” and hence our ignorance of Christ. And that is precisely why every Mass has readings from both the Old Testament and the New Testament; it is the same God who saves his people in both.

The gospel today invites us to know Jesus through both Old and New Testaments: to marry the two Testaments. Let me explain a little phrase Jesus uses that really packs a punch. In summary of his Sermon on the Mount, he says: “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.” Then he adds: “This is the Law the Prophets.” That little phrase “Law and Prophets” is a merism. There’s a twenty-five cent word you can use to impress your friends at cocktail parties. What is a merism? That is a figure of speech that uses individual parts to indicate a larger whole. For instance, if someone says, “she fought the attacker tooth and nail to protect her children,” the phrase “tooth and nail” is a merism meaning she used all her strength. Of, if someone says: “I searched high and low for my missing keys,” the terms “high and low” is a merism meaning searching everywhere. So, too, the phrase “Law and Prophets” are only two parts of the larger whole of the Old Testament.

Did you know, though, that there are actually three parts of the Old Testament, called the TANAK? TANAK stands for three words in Hebrew: Torah (Law), Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). But Jesus says “Law and Prophets” as a merism, a summary of the whole Old Testament by two of its constituent parts. In other words, you cannot just love the Jesus of the New Testament and turn your nose up at the God of the Old Testament. The God of the Old Testament IS the God of the New Testament. Only someone woefully ignorant of Scripture (and therefore ignorant of Christ) would dare to drive a wedge between those two Testaments, to divorce the Old and the New.

My friends, how fervent is your love for Jesus these days? Like the marriages I deal with at the tribunal did you fall in love with the Lord with a love at first sight, but the fire of that love has gone out over the years? Has the fairy tale ended in divorce? Maybe the problem is you never really knew the Lord. That is, an ignorance of scripture led to an ignorance of Christ. Well, here’s the good news: it’s never too late to fall in love with the Lord again. St. Augustine taught in his classic work, The City of God, “Tell me what a people loves and I shall tell you what it is.” And remember you cannot love what you do not know.

Praised be Jesus Christ!