Daily Mass Readings — Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent
"Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life; You have the words of everlasting life." — cf. John 6:63, 68
Liturgical Context
At the midpoint of the Third Week, the liturgy turns to the gift of the Law — not as burden, but as sign of divine intimacy. Israel alone received God's statutes; and Christ, far from overturning them, comes to bring them to their fullest and most glorious completion. In this Lenten desert of penance and purification, the Church invites us to rediscover love for God's commandments, to carry them in our hearts, and to hand them on with joy.
✠ First Reading
Deuteronomy 4:1, 5–9
¹ Now therefore, O Israel, hear the commandments and judgments which I teach thee, that doing them, thou mayst live, and entering in mayst possess the land which the Lord the God of your fathers will give you.
⁵ You shall observe, and fulfil them in practice: for this is your wisdom, and understanding in the sight of nations, that hearing all these precepts, they may say: ⁶ Behold a wise and understanding people, a great nation. Neither is there any other nation so great, that hath gods so nigh them, as our God is present to all our petitions. ⁷ For what other nation is there so renowned, that hath ceremonies, and just judgments, and all the law, that I will set forth this day before your eyes?
⁹ Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently. Forget not the words that thy eyes have seen, and let them not go out of thy heart all the days of thy life. Thou shalt teach them to thy children and to thy grandchildren.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Commentary
Moses stands before Israel on the threshold of the Promised Land — an old man who will not himself enter it. His final act is to transmit. He gives the people not gold or territory but something infinitely more precious: the Law of God.
Three truths shine from this passage. First, the Law is a gift of divine proximity: "what other nation hath gods so nigh them?" The surrounding peoples had idols of wood and stone — remote, deaf, dumb. Israel's God speaks, answers, and dwells. To receive the commandments is to receive God Himself drawing near. Second, the Law is wisdom before the nations — faithful observance makes Israel a luminous sign to a world groping in darkness. Third, and most urgent for Lent, tradition must be handed on: to children and to grandchildren. The Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum calls this the living Tradition of the Church: "The Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes" (DV §8).
The father who teaches his child the Our Father, the grandmother who prays the Rosary at bedtime, the catechist who opens the Scriptures — all are fulfilling the solemn charge Moses lays upon Israel this morning.
✠ Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 147:12–13, 15–16, 19–20
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
¹² Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem: praise thy God, O Sion. ¹³ Because he hath strengthened the bolts of thy gates, he hath blessed thy children within thee.
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
¹⁵ He sendeth forth his speech to the earth: his word runneth swiftly. ¹⁶ He giveth snow like wool: he scattereth mists like ashes.
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
¹⁹ He hath shewed his word to Jacob: his justices and his judgments to Israel. ²⁰ He hath not done in like manner to every nation: and his judgments he hath not made manifest to them.
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
Commentary
The Psalmist's hymn of praise responds to Moses' proclamation. Having heard that Israel is singularly blessed in possessing God's commandments, the assembly bursts into jubilant wonder: "He hath not done in like manner to every nation." The Psalm weaves together two modes of God's self-communication — creation (snow, frost, the swift word that governs every element) and covenant (the statutes given to Jacob alone).
St. Thomas Aquinas taught that natural law, written in the hearts of all, is a participation in the eternal law of God; but the revealed Law given to Israel, fulfilled in Christ, is a higher gift still — it lifts the people into a covenant of personal intimacy (Summa Theologiae, I-II, q.91, a.2). This is the Law that Christ will declare He has not come to abolish, but to perfect.
In Baptism we have been grafted into the New Israel. The privilege of which Psalm 147 sings is ours — not by birthright but by grace. Let our praise be the cry of hearts genuinely astonished by the mercy they have received.
✠ Verse Before the Gospel
cf. John 6:63, 68
Thy words, O Lord, are spirit and life: thou hast the words of eternal life.
✠ The Holy Gospel
Matthew 5:17–19
The Lord be with you. — And with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Glory be to Thee, O Lord.
¹⁷ Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. ¹⁸ For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled. ¹⁹ He therefore that shall break one of these least commandments, and shall so teach men, shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But he that shall do and teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
The Gospel of the Lord. Praise be to Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ.
Commentary
These verses open the Sermon on the Mount and address the inevitable question Christ's teaching raises: is He a revolutionary who sets aside Moses? His answer resounds: "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."
The word fulfil carries a threefold depth. Christ fulfils the Law by living it perfectly — He alone keeps every commandment from within, by love rather than compulsion. He deepens it — the Beatitudes show that the Law's interior demand goes far beyond its letter. And He accomplishes everything it foreshadowed — He is the telos, the end and goal toward which every precept, every prophecy, every sacrifice was always pointing (cf. Romans 10:4). The Catechism states: "Jesus did not abolish the Law of Sinai, but rather fulfilled it with such perfection that he revealed its ultimate meaning" (CCC §592).
"Not one jot or one tittle" — the jot is the smallest Hebrew letter, the tittle the finest stroke distinguishing one letter from another. Not even the smallest detail of the Law is arbitrary. Every precept has its place in God's single, coherent plan of salvation. This is a rebuke to every tendency — ancient and modern — to set the God of the Old Testament against the God of the New. There is one God, one covenant, one salvation, progressively and gloriously revealed.
Notice the order of verse 19: do first, then teach. The great saints — Paul, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Francis de Sales — were first faithful practitioners of the commandments they proclaimed. Our Lord calls every disciple to this integrity: not intellectual assent but embodied fidelity, and then generous transmission. Lent is the season to close the gap between profession and practice.
✠ Daily Reflection: The Law as Love
"I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." — Matthew 5:17
There is a temptation — ancient and ever-renewed — to imagine that the Gospel liberates us from the commandments. Christ refuses this comfortable illusion. He does not lower the bar; He raises it. Not arbitrarily, but because He sees the full stature of what we are made to be — the image of God (cf. CCC §1700) — and will not accept a diminished vision.
St. ThΓ©rΓ¨se of Lisieux did not see the commandments as obstacles to love. She saw them as the very contours of love's expression. In her Story of a Soul, she desired to be the least — to perform the smallest duties with the greatest love — because love pours itself out in the smallest things. Every "least commandment" is an occasion of love.
And what fuels this fidelity? Not grim willpower, but the charity of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). The Catechism calls the Sermon on the Mount "the perfection here on earth of the divine law" (CCC §1965). The Law is fulfilled not by gritted teeth but by a heart transformed by grace into the likeness of the One who kept it perfectly.
Is there a commandment — perhaps one of the "least" — that I have habitually broken or quietly set aside? And is there someone I am failing to hand the faith on to — by word, by example, by prayer?
✠ Closing Prayer
O Lord Jesus Christ, eternal Word of the Father, who art not come to destroy but to fulfil all things: grant us, in this holy Lent, a renewed love for Thy commandments. Let us not be among those who break even the least precept through carelessness, but number us among those who both observe and hand on Thy Law with joy.
Our Father... Hail Mary... Glory be...
✠ Laus Deo semper — Praise be to God always ✠
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