Don’t pick up a pencil. Don’t light a candle. Don’t carry something heavier than a dried fig. Don’t walk more than 2/3 a mile. If you get a cut, don’t put on a bandaid. If you spill water on your clothes, you can shake the water off but not wring the water out. You can dip a radish into saltwater, but not for too long, because that would make it a pickle.
These are just a few of the Sabbath laws the Jews were expected to follow. The Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud gave them to the people as a means of defining what is a sin and what isn’t. Clearly, the Jews were meticulous about keeping the letter of the law. They lived in fear of God’s justice, focusing on keeping the external acts of their religion.
Between men, they were accustomed to Levitical justice: “as he hath done, so shall it be done to him”. To the wicked, justice metes out the appropriate punishment; to the righteous, justice bestows upon them their just reward. By the time Jesus started his ministry, the Pharisees and scribes had spent centuries leading the Jewish people toward mere practice of earthly ritual and the prideful presumption of salvation. They practiced devotions, but they lacked devotion.
They were preoccupied with these things because they feared God’s judgement, and also because they sought something else: his mercy. When God created his covenant with Moses, he promised his mercy. This covenant was well known amongst the Israelites, who often spoke of it, prayed for it, and knew its requirement: to follow God’s law. So for generations the rabbis spent their lives teaching and debating things like what constituted work on the Sabbath so that they would receive God’s mercy. There was no concept of mercy for their fellow man, however.
How must it have stung their ears to hear Jesus proclaim to the crowds, “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven”. They were supposed to be the authority on righteousness! What their stony hearts didn’t understand was that Jesus was talking about a supernatural righteousness, which was an understanding of God that surpassed their understanding and ability to teach. So Jesus taught what the Pharisees and scribes could not. The entire Sermon on the Mount was such a radical teaching that the crowds who heard it were “astonished”.
It is easy to think that Jesus’ teaching was only about mercy between men. After all, he spoke of it over and over, and it’s clear that this was an entirely new concept to the Jewish people. But Jesus was actually teaching something more radically new. It was the fusion of justice and mercy, elevated to a new level. It was the concept of supernatural Charity: to have mercy toward others out of justice towards God. Jesus preached it because it is essential to understanding as well as living the New Covenant which was about to be ushered forth as the fulfillment and perfection of God’s law.
The concept of Charity has been watered down in present-day society. We think of it in terms of tax write-offs: what did you give to a non-profit organization that may or may not be your house of worship. But that is not what Jesus taught. Jesus taught true Charity, supernatural Charity, Charity that is done because we love our neighbor, who is created in the image and likeness of God.
True Charity, the supernatural theological virtue of Charity, elevates all virtue to true virtue because supernatural Charity knows and loves God, its true end. Good works done for our neighbor out of supernatural Charity are done ultimately for the love of God. Thomas À Kempis wrote, “Without Charity, external work is of no value, but anything done in Charity, be it ever so small and trivial, is entirely fruitful inasmuch as God weighs the love with which a man acts rather than the deed itself.”
In the Knights of Columbus, our First Degree is Charity. Certainly when he founded the Knights of Columbus and developed the four degrees of Knighthood, Fr. McGivney didn’t have in mind a line-item deduction to a government agency that didn’t exist yet. The First Degree is the most important degree, because like the virtue that is associated with it, it elevates the other degrees. We were founded to do God’s work out of love for God first, and be a fraternal brotherhood second.
So I ask you: Have Unity and Fraternity become more important to you than supernatural Charity? Have you become more concerned with devotions than devotion? How do you, brother Knights, practice the virtue of the First Degree, supernatural Charity?