Our justice is to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. Their ideal should have been to attain the justice of Abraham, our father in faith. He responded immediately and generously to all that God proposed to him. Each one of us, however, even the least in the kingdom of God, is more privileged than Abraham. Our justice flows from our faith in the Son of God made man for us, who leads us to union and communion with God. More than that, we are enlightened, inspired and motivated in the works of justice that we perform by the Holy Spirit, who writes God’s law in our hearts and enables us to fulfil it. If that were not the case, we would not be able to preach the Gospel by our lives, nor would we rejoice in the dignity our trinitarian faith brings us: the dignity of children of God, temples of the Holy Spirit.
Abraham was just without needing the guidance of the law; it was the stiff-necked race who came away from the flesh pots of Egypt, the leeks and the garlic, who needed the law, who had to be trained as slaves are trained, led by the law as by a chain. We have been set free from the law so that we may live in a willing and more loving and more complete submission to God. Saint Benedict had a very clear understanding of this. When he heard of a hermit who had bound himself with a chain, he wrote to him saying: You ought to be bound by the chain which is Christ and not by a chain of iron. Our justice is to exceed that of the Jews of old because it is a response of love to God who has shown his love for us. He does not invite us just to set aside a tenth of our income for his service, but to renounce all our possessions in favour of the poor. The Christian is not content simply to renounce adultery but seeks God’s grace to keep both mind and body pure. He is ready then to respond, should the call come, to bear witness to the resurrection of Jesus by a celibate life. Nor do we merely set aside a day in the week for God, but we forsake our families responding to the call of Jesus to follow him, to give our lives joyfully to his service: the Lord is my portion and my cup. We have the example of Abraham, he was God’s friend. He left his country and his father’s house in response to God, following God’s Word. He even surrenders his beloved only son in sacrifice. He made himself a pilgrim on the earth so that the Son of God, his descendant, might also be a pilgrim and a victim for all his descendants. This is the detachment that our Lord is pointing to in the Sermon on the Mount, the ideal for which we strive.