To comment on my own question above, about what it meant to fulfill the law.
I’m sure it was someone on EWTN who provided some insight into this. It was probably Dr. Scott Hahn. If I am quoting him correctly, he said that when Jesus said “It is finished” on the cross, “it” was the old covenant, the old law.
The Old Covenant ended, as all covenant’s end, with the death of the party to the covenant. So, Jesus’ death was the end of the old covenant. Of course, he established a “new covenant” that would last forever, because he lives forever.
So, as the previous post from the 1969 commentary suggested, that we needn’t look at precept by precept of the old covenant. Yeah duh (to me) that’s why they called the two parts of the Bible the Old Testament and the New Testament. (yeah, contrary to the quotation from the 1969 commentary, there is SURELY an indication that the old law has been superceded in Mt – e.g. Jesus says “I give you a NEW commandment” etc. and many of the previous statues and ordinances were ended, in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.)
This really ties in well with Pope Benedict in his book “Jesus of Nazareth.” He points out there how Jesus fulfills all the requirements of putting in a new covenant: there is a new lawgiver, not Moses but Himself. There is a new Temple, not of bricks, but of HIm. There is a new law, which he was expressing, for example, in the sermon on the mount. He replaces the old priesthood, as the eternal priest.
Yeah, Hahn’s comment recently just came back to me in a very helpful way. Wow, that’s great.