Fr. Sostenes’ latest homily, delivered online on June 10th 2009.

There isn´t in the world any place or society that can survive without laws or commandments, they are important for organization, to improve relationships, and to bear the difficulties of the life, without them we will live a true mess. Even the animal kingdom needs some organization with some laws, as the ant´s nest or the bees, for example. Today we will find a Law too, but not a simple law among citizens, not a simple law among insects, but the marvelous Law, the Law of the Life.

Jesus, in our Gospel (Matthew 5:17-19), begins saying: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill”. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law. He gives reason to the Law, indeed He´s the only one able to explain it fully, because just in Him, we can understand the Law of the life. Truly, in other words, we could say, Jesus is the translator. Our Father gave us the text: The Law of the Life. And the Holy Spirit is the voice of Him. So Saint Paul wrote:  “for the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3); the Holy Spirit make us able to listen to the translation of the Law of the Life. But his translation isn´t tied to believers, but every being alive. Because He´s the Master of the life.

The Law of the Life is given through The Master of the Life. Our God put his Law inside every being alive, and if these Laws could be obeyed surely in our world we won´t find such death.  We live in a world with laws that many times guide us to the death not to the life, for example about abortion, or atomic bombs, laws of unrestricted business were guiding the people to a big crisis and like what the United States has today 14.5 million unemployed. There are laws leading to war. Indeed, there is a stamp that I saw in internet: “war: good for few, bad for most”. Any law without love is a law of death, a law that measures people by their wallets isn´t a law of the life, a law that measures people by theirs clothes, color, etc. isn´t a law of the Life, a law that doesn´t measure the human being for what he is really (Son of God), It isn´t a Law of the Life.

Jesus is the translator of the true Law of the Life, He is the measure to any Law exactly because He´s the Master of the Life. If in anywhere there are laws, we are invited to think, to argue ourselves: Am I living in Law of the Life? Am I bearing the Law of the Life? Am I listening to the Translator Jesus? I don´t want to live any more in the law of death, but today I want to ask the Master of the Life to translate in my life his new Law, the Law of Life, and you?

Fr. Sóstenes Vieira
Community Canção Nova