HW: Where to with the Synodal Pathway in light of Matthew 5:17-37?

A reflection on Matthew 5:17-37, written and spoken by Kieran J. O'Mahony OSA. 

Gentle piano music to close the meditation

Transcript

John’s Lane

15 February 2026
Change

Matthew 5:17-37

Welcome
By Irish tradition, the feast of St Brigid marks the first day of spring. The cycle of time moves on and we are enjoying a little more daylight in spite of the rain. Change is the one constant in life and nothing really remains the same. Cardinal Newman once wrote: “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” Newman had in mind the Christian Church, always evolving and developing. The question arises again today as we walk the Synodal Pathway, initiated by Pope Francis and now in the hands of Pope Leo XIV. There are many proposals on the table: some are straight opposites and others are, putting in gently, in tension with the received tradition.

Topic
A question arises: how do we balance tradition and innovation, respecting where we have come from and yet open to where the Spirit is leading us.

Steps
As often, a bit of history can help. The gospel for this Sunday — the very next part of the Sermon on the Mount — may feel both confining and freeing. Confining because of the emphatic affirmation of the full Law, the Torah. Freeing because the subsequent six antitheses (of which we hear four) go beyond the Torah.

Christianity started out as a movement within Judaism. It seems clear that certain parts of the early Church observed the full Jewish Law, such as the community in Jerusalem, under James, the brother of the Lord. The tragic “parting of the ways” with Judaism happened unevenly and not all at once. In the case of Matthew, when he was writing his Gospel, he had two “events” in view: the destruction of the Temple in ad 70 and the later re-organisation of rabbinic Judaism around ad 80. As a break-away Jewish sect, his community saw itself as the authentic evolution of the next stage of Judaism. As as result, they were keen to assert their roots in the mother religion and to underline their fidelity to tradition, the Law and the Prophets. Hence the emphasis on continuity in today’s Gospel reading. At the same time, something “new” had happened in Jesus and the subsequent antitheses are in tension with the tradition — throwing new light from Jesus on what God is asking of us now.

The unnamed dialogue partner here is St Paul. He had long ago set aside key markers of Jewish identity: the food laws, sabbath observance and circumcision. Matthew never mentions these and perhaps that discussion is already well in the past. But Matthew represents a kind of compromise: yes, the whole Law is always there; yes, Jesus intensifies it; and yes, the emphasis is to be on love, mercy and justice. It seems to me that there was indeed a major break with tradition, while affirming the core values of the Jewish Law. It is “interesting” that those who teach others to infringe the least of the commandments and those who keep them are both in the kingdom of heaven!! Without being unkind to the Gospel writer, we know that subsequently his compromise was not the final word — that really belongs to Paul, so that all of humanity could be accommodated in the Christian community.

Across Christian history, both doctrines and ethics have evolved. An example of ethical development would be the relatively new social doctrine of the Catholic Church, asserting the equal dignity and rights of all and finally condemning, for example, slavery and human trafficking. Examples of doctrinal development would include the following: the Incarnation and the Trinity, the seven sacraments, the Eucharist, papal authority and a range of doctrines about Mary. Ecumenism, an innovation of the Protestant Churches, is now firmly part of Catholic teaching. In other words, the Catholic Church, for all its apparent resistance to change, actually practices the development of doctrine, as described by Cardinal Newman in his book of the same name. “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” 

Conclusion
Today, on the Synodal Pathway, we are at a critical point, respecting where we have come from and yet open to where the Spirit is leading us. Or, in other words, when is development authentic development and when is it distortion? Personally, I think the inclusion of women in all roles in the Church would be an authentic development, enriching and not denying what we have received. Liturgy and preaching would be immeasurably enriched by the experience, worldview and wisdom of women. It would always seem clear that in the light of contemporary understanding of human nature, by means of psychology and anthropology, we need to look again at our various teachings on gender. And so on.

The key is to respect all the voices and try to be as inclusive as possible. The proposed Synodal pathway of listening to the Spirit as we listen to each other is a better way forward than confrontation and division. A solid foundation was laid by Pope Francis. Perhaps Pope Leo — more a consensus figure — will be able to take all this forward. Still, eventually a direction or directions will have to be taken. As Matthew himself puts it later in his Gospel, quoting the words of Jesus: 

Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are ruined, but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, so that both are preserved. (Matthew 9:17 NRSVue) 

Amen to that!