The Ceremonial Law as Acquired Virtue
The commandments of the Law of Moses require both interior and
exterior acts. There are commandments which pertain to the heart (love
of G-d, to love of neighbor, fear of G-d etc.) and commandments which
pertain to the body (resting on the Sabbath, eating kosher food,
etc.). Virtually all the commandments of Jesus relate to
interior acts . True, he requires acts of charity. He requires us to
feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick etc. but that is
because those acts bear witness to love. It is the love that he
requires, and it has been said by Catholic saints that, without love,
even such acts are meaningless.
No Jewish theologian would ever say that about the
commandments of the Law of Moses. The commandments of the ceremonial
law have a profound religious value even if they are observed with no
more than the minimal intention of acting to fulfill them. The acts of
the ceremonial Law are spiritual exercises that operate on the heart
through the body, so that they are efficacious and beneficial even when
they are done as though all that was required was the external act
itself (though, of course, doing them in that way reaps only the
minimum benefit). That is why Paul could refer to himself as "blameless
under the Law” (Phi. 3:6) even though he was acting out of "a
righteousness of my own, based on law." That "righteousness of my own,
based on law" is sufficient to move the body in the service of G-d. A
Jew who does not recognize the possibility of moving the heart to G-d,
as St. Paul clearly didn’t before his conversion (see Romans
7), is likely to believe that the external acts of the
commandments are necessary for salvation, not because G-d is keeping a
record of what was and was not done, but because it is only through the
external acts that the heart—the essential man—is configured to
holiness. He knows no other way.
Jesus taught that through faith, in cooperation with grace, a
person can act upon his heart directly. That is why the commandments of
Jesus all pertain to the heart. They are interior acts of devotion
which are only possible in a state of grace. Some inferred
from Jesus’ teaching that it was no longer necessary to act upon the
heart through the body, i.e., through the acts of the ceremonial
Law. So Jesus reaffirmed the importance of keeping the
commandments (Matt. 5 & 23). Why, indeed, were they still
important? Because, among other things, the commandments are to faith
as the acquired moral virtues are to the infused virtues. A
person who has, through education and instruction, acquired virtues
conducts himself in a way which is consistent with man’s stature as a
rational being. The infused virtues then perfect his conduct, as faith
perfects reason and grace perfects nature. When a man lacks the
acquired virtues, he can still receive the infused virtues, but he
finds it hard to act upon them. He is more likely to experience infused
virtue as a bad conscience rather than as an inspiration, and he may
even reject it, because in the absence of virtue, he may have chosen
for himself a way of life which cannot be reconciled with faith.
The ceremonial law is a way of life, passed on from generation
to generation, through education and repetition. Ordained by G-d, it is
nevertheless, a natural pattern of conduct—natural because it can be
maintained out of "a righteousness of my own," even by a person who is
not in a state of grace—that is directed to man’s supernatural end. The
observance of the commandments prepares the Jew for the perfection
which grace brings, just as the acquired virtues prepare a person for
the perfection of the infused virtues.The Ceremonial Law
directs a person to live in a way that is consistent, not only with his
stature as a rational being, but as a man of faith and child of G-d.
Now that the Church no longer suppresses the observance of the
Law as though it implied a denial of the adequacy of Christian faith
for salvation or, as a figure of Christ that anticipated him, a denial
that he has come, the question arises: if the commandments are
comparable to the acquired virtues with respect to faith, why shouldn't
Christians keep them? There are many reasons, but I think that the
ultimate reason is that the obligation to keep them arose out of the
covenant of Sinai, and, of course, that covenant was made only with the
people who were redeemed from Egypt, with the Children of Israel.
The rabbis teach us that derech eretz, i.e., the acquired
virtues, precede Torah. The Ceremonial Law is not a
substitute for the acquired virtues, but adds something to them which
has specific importance for Jewish faith.Jesus admonished his
Jewish disciples to keep the Law because, for the Jew, Christian faith
perfects the faith which the Ceremonial Law promotes. Jesus
wasn’t teaching the Jewish people another religion. He was teaching
them Judaism. The Gentile does not know Christian faith as a perfection
of Judaism. He’s not Jewish. He knows Christian faith as the
universal faith, as the way that G-d addresses all mankind and calls
him to holiness. That is the catholic faith of the Church and, within
the Catholic faith, the sacramentals serve the purpose that the
ceremonial Law has in Jewish faith.
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