Fr Senan Furlong OSB
One of President JFK’s favourite sayings was: Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place. The saying, attributed to G.K. Chesterton, has given rise to the principle known as “Chesterton’s fence”. It states that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. In other words, when making great decisions we must understand the rationale behind previous decisions. If we don’t understand how we got
“here,” we run the risk of making things much worse. However, the image of a fence is ambiguous. Yes, a fence protects and establishes proper boundaries but it also excludes and shuts out, even privileging fear over welcome. Rightly does Robert Frost in his poem Mending
Wall ask himself the question:
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out.
A much-revered concept of Rabbinic Judaism is making a fence around the Torah or God’s Law. Just as a fence around a yard or a house protects it, the Rabbis introduced safeguards to make sure God’s Law was kept in its fullness. After all the Law was given as God’s gift to his
people and so, they love it with all their heart. As today’s psalm sings: Teach me the demands of your statues and I will keep them to the end. Train me to observe your Law, to keep it with my heart.
In today’s gospel we see Jesus, like the rabbis, making a fence around God’s Law. Jesus insists that he has come not to abolish the Law or the prophets, “I have come not to abolish but to fulfil.” To fulfil the Law is to determine and carry out what God wants and so bring it to completion. It is to discover the deeper intentions of God. As God’s Son, Jesus is the one who can teach us what those intentions are. He can tell us for sure what is in accord with God’s will, with his loving desire for us. The heart of that desire is expressed in the favourite saying of St Matthew’s Gospel taken from the prophet Hosea: What I want is mercy, not sacrifice.
Jesus does not overturn the Law of Moses, nor does he set us free from the Law. He requires us to go beyond the Law by doing more than the Law requires. You have heard that it was said … but I say. The Law condemns murder: You shall not murder, but Jesus says: Do not be anger or resentful; do not speak with scorn and contempt; do not think of another person as mere low-life. This is the stuff of which murder is made, so fence it off by reconciliation. The Law condemns adultery: You shall not commit adultery, but Jesus says: Do not look on another person with lust. The problem begins with perception, so fence it off before one thing leads to another. The Law condemns false oaths: You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord, but Jesus says: mean what you say, say what you mean and do what you say. Make a fence to wall out untruth before you deceive yourself.
God in his wisdom has forged a covenant with us. It is a wisdom, as St Paul tells us, that God has predestined to be for our glory. He enfolds us in his extravagant love and he asks us to love every other creature with the same passion, the same consistency, the same faithfulness, the
same charity revealed in Jesus, who loved us unto death.
Today’s gospel challenges us to assess our fences and ask what we are walling in or walling out. Many, if not most, of our fences have to go once we know why they were put up in the first place. But Christ our Lord also asks to make fences around his Law so that we might choose
rightly, live justly and love peacefully.
Open my eyes that I may see
the wonders of your Law.