20 August 2021
Memorial of Saint Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church
In the Tora there were considered 613 laws, and so the question of priority certainly made sense. To this day, among scholars of the Law within Judaism, this issue of priority provides a great source of conversation. Today’s reading may give the impression that the superfluity of laws are unnecessary. If we love God and love our neighbor we don’t have to worry about the law. Jesus never negated the laws, as he stated in Mathew 5:17 when he proclaimed that he came not to eradicate law but to fulfill it. Particular law has its understanding in foundational ideas and the negation of the particular often comes at a sacrifice to its foundations. Perhaps it is for this reason that Luke portrays Mary as a true daughter of Israel, fulfilling the expressions of the law which had as their foundational focus of love of God and love of neighbor. Popular telling of the Holy house of Nazareth is filled with details about how Mary cared for the poor and the needy. These stories certainly are not in scripture–the account of the wedding at Cana certainly indicates Mary’s charitable concern– but such non-biblical elaborations certainly reflect Mary’s fundamental disposition proclaimed at the Magnificat. If Mary recognized that God raises up the lowly it would be no surprise that she would stand as a model for Christ’s summation of the law as love of God and love of neighbor. Our faith teaches us Mary fulfilled the law, not for its own sake, but for the essentials of what that law represented.