Youcat commented through CCC – Question n. 336 - Part IV.

YOUCAT Question n. 336 – Part IV. How did Jesus deal with the Law of the Old Covenant?

(Youcat answer - repeated) “Do not think”, says Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, “that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them” (Mt 5:17).

A deepening through CCC

(CCC 1977) Christ is the end of the law (cf. Rom 10:4); only he teaches and bestows the justice of God. 

Reflecting and meditating 

(Youcat comment) Jesus, being a faithful Jew, lived according to the ethical ideas and requirements of his time. But on a series of issues he departed from a literal, merely formal interpretation of the Law.

(CCC Comment)

(CCC 1972) The New Law is called a law of love because it makes us act out of the love infused by the Holy Spirit, rather than from fear; a law of grace, because it confers the strength of grace to act, by means of faith and the sacraments; a law of freedom, because it sets us free from the ritual and juridical observances of the Old Law, inclines us to act spontaneously by the prompting of charity and, finally, lets us pass from the condition of a servant who "does not know what his master is doing" to that of a friend of Christ - "For all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you" - or even to the status of son and heir (Jn 15:15; cf. Jas 1:25; 2:12; Gal 4:1-7. 21-31; Rom 8:15).

(This question: How did Jesus deal with the Law of the Old Covenant? Is  continued)