Saturday, February 11 : Origen

I should like to remind disciples of Christ of God’s goodness: let none among you allow yourselves to be shaken by the heretics if, in controversy, they say that the God of the Law is not good but just and that the Law of Moses does not teach goodness but justice. Let those detractors of both God and the Law take note of how Moses himself and Aaron fulfilled, as precursors, what the Gospel would later teach. Consider how Moses “loves his enemies and prays for those who persecute him” (Mt 5:44)…; see how, “falling prostrate”, they both pray for those who grumbled and wanted to kill them (Nb 17:10f.). Thus we find the Gospel powerfully present in the Law and should understand that the Gospels are supported on the foundation of the Law. As for me, I do not apply the name ‘Old Testament’ to the Law when I consder it spiritually. The Law only becomes an ‘Old Testament’ for those unwilling to understand it according to the spirit. For them, it has necessarily become ‘old’ and has aged because it cannot preserve its strength. But for us who understand and expound it in spirit and according to the sense of the Gospel, it is always new. The two Testaments are one new Testament for us, not according to date but in the newness of their meaning. Doesn’t the apostle John also think of it in this way when he says in his epistle: “Children, I give a new commandment to you, let us love one another”? (cf. 1Jn 2:8; 4:7; Jn 13:34). He knew that the commandment of love had long ago been given in the Law (1Jn 2:7f.; Lv 19:18). But since “love never fails” (1Cor 13:8)…, he asserts the perpetual newness of this precept that never grows old… For sinners, and for those who fail to keep the bond of charity, even the Gospels grow old. There can be no New Testament for anyone who does not “put away the old self and put on the new self, created in God’s way” (Eph 4:22.24).

maronite readings – rosary,team