Hey, guys.
As Christians, we all are under the law of Christ. But for Catholics, Jesus’ law has made the rituals and purity laws of the Mosaic law obsolete and has replaced them with the Sacraments.
Is this the correct understanding of Scripture from a Catholic perspective?
We’re not “under the law” at all anymore; we’re “now under grace”, which means that we fulfill the demands of justice, the requirements to be righteous, by virtue of being in communion with God, which is effected by faith, formalized via the sacrament of Baptism as Jesus commanded.
“If you love me you will obey my commands.” (John 14:15) Love is what now should compel us to obedience under the New Covenant. **“Love fulfills the Law.” **(Rom 13:8)
To be under the Old Law, apart from grace, we strive to obey by our own efforts, expressing our own “righteousness” by external obedience. Under the New Law, the law of grace, we’re to be interiorly enabled and empowered, at the level of the heart, to obey by the Spirit of God, from Whom authentic righteousness flows, as He transforms us into His image, the image of love.
“Apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) This communion is how it was always meant to be for man. This is the relationship that Adam broke.
The “Law of Christ”, the “New Law, “under grace”, the “New Covenant” are all related terms. The “Old Law”, the Old Covenant, is now obsolete, replaced with a “new and better Law”:
**1963 According to Christian tradition, the Law is holy, spiritual, and good,14 yet still imperfect. Like a tutor15 it shows what must be done, but does not of itself give the strength, the grace of the Spirit, to fulfill it. Because of sin, which it cannot remove, it remains a law of bondage. According to St. Paul, its special function is to denounce and disclose sin, which constitutes a “law of concupiscence” in the human heart.16 However, the Law remains the first stage on the way to the kingdom. It prepares and disposes the chosen people and each Christian for conversion and faith in the Savior God. It provides a teaching which endures forever, like the Word of God.
1965 The New Law or the Law of the Gospel is the perfection here on earth of the divine law, natural and revealed. It is the work of Christ and is expressed particularly in the Sermon on the Mount. It is also the work of the Holy Spirit and through him it becomes the interior law of charity: "I will establish a New Covenant with the house of Israel. . . . I will put my laws into their hands, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."19
1966 The New Law is the grace of the Holy Spirit given to the faithful through faith in Christ. It works through charity; it uses the Sermon on the Mount to teach us what must be done and makes use of the sacraments to give us the grace to do it:
If anyone should meditate with devotion and perspicacity on the sermon our Lord gave on the mount, as we read in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, he will doubtless find there . . . the perfect way of the Christian life. . . . This sermon contains . . . all the precepts needed to shape one’s life.20
1967 The Law of the Gospel “fulfills,” refines, surpasses, and leads the Old Law to its perfection.21 In the Beatitudes, the New Law fulfills the divine promises by elevating and orienting them toward the “kingdom of heaven.” It is addressed to those open to accepting this new hope with faith - the poor, the humble, the afflicted, the pure of heart, those persecuted on account of Christ and so marks out the surprising ways of the Kingdom.
1968 The Law of the Gospel fulfills the commandments of the Law. The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, far from abolishing or devaluing the moral prescriptions of the Old Law, releases their hidden potential and has new demands arise from them: it reveals their entire divine and human truth. It does not add new external precepts, but proceeds to reform the heart, the root of human acts, where man chooses between the pure and the impure,22 where faith, hope, and charity are formed and with them the other virtues. The Gospel thus brings the Law to its fullness through imitation of the perfection of the heavenly Father, through forgiveness of enemies and prayer for persecutors, in emulation of the divine generosity.23**
The sacraments are not laws so much as they are means-avenues of grace- which God has provided to establish and maintain our relationship-our
communion- with Him as well as to live out our faith in other important ways.
**1076 The Church was made manifest to the world on the day of Pentecost by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.1 The gift of the Spirit ushers in a new era in the “dispensation of the mystery” the age of the Church, during which Christ manifests, makes present, and communicates his work of salvation through the liturgy of his Church, "until he comes."2 In this age of the Church Christ now lives and acts in and with his Church, in a new way appropriate to this new age. He acts through the sacraments in what the common Tradition of the East and the West calls “the sacramental economy”; this is the communication (or “dispensation”) of the fruits of Christ’s Paschal mystery in the celebration of the Church’s “sacramental” liturgy.
It is therefore important first to explain this “sacramental dispensation” (chapter one). The nature and essential features of liturgical celebration will then appear more clearly (chapter two).
1116 Sacraments are “powers that comes forth” from the Body of Christ,33 which is ever-living and life-giving. They are actions of the Holy Spirit at work in his Body, the Church. They are “the masterworks of God” in the new and everlasting covenant.
**
