Homily for the Sunday Mass of February 15: “Knowing how to be constantly in the truth”

Sunday 15 February 2026
6rd Sunday of the Year – Year A

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1^st Reading: Sirach 15:15-20
Psalm: 118 (119), 1-2, 4-5, 17-18, 33-34
2^rd reading: 1 Corinthians 2, 6-10
Gospel: Matthew 5, 17-37

"If you wish, you can observe the commandments."“That’s not quite the experience we have,” said Ben Sira the Wise… “That’s not quite the experience Saint Paul has. Yes, we may want to observe God’s commandments, but as Paul says in the Letter to the Romans, we experience within ourselves a kind of other law, which means that wanting good is within our reach, but not accomplishing it; which means that we sometimes…” to do the evil we do not want and not to do the good we wantAnd yet, Paul, who explains this in the Letter to the Romans (7:19), writes in another letter—the Letter to the Philippians—that he, a Pharisee, observes the law. He says precisely: As for observing the law of Moses, I was a Pharisee; as for zeal, I persecuted the church; as for righteousness based on the law, I was blameless. (3,5-6).

And then Jesus tells us: “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”Is it about being more irreproachable than irreproachable, like Coluche who mocked laundry detergent that washes whiter than white?

The justice that surpasses that of the Pharisees is not a justice produced by man. In that short passage from the Letter to the Philippians that I mentioned, Paul goes on to show how he turned around and how all that wealth that was his—that of being an irreproachable Pharisee—he came to see as nothing before the superiority of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord (3,8).

After telling us that unless our righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven, Jesus returns to the second tablet of the law, the second part of the Ten Commandments. He says: "You have learned... and I tell you," It leads us to see the essence of what the commandments contain. It's not just about not killing: it's about seeing how, in various ways, we can take the life of our neighbor. It's not just about not formally committing adultery, but that adultery actually begins in the heart and in the lust of the heart. It's not just about observing oaths.

which are done, but to know how to be constantly in the truth and to have a yes that is a yes, a no that is a no and so on.

In doing so, what does Jesus do? He reveals to us how God acts. Since we were created in the image and likeness of God, our vocation is to...to imitate God like beloved childrenAs Paul will tell the Ephesians (5:1), it is about loving as Jesus loved us: this is the new commandment. Therefore, the commandments first describe God's actions. God is not a murderer; God is the source of life. God shows mercy, and his mercy surpasses justice. God does not covet us in order to seize us; he desires our love. God remains faithful to us no matter what we do, and we can always return to him. God is true and real, and his word is always credible because, as the covenant of faith* states, he can neither be mistaken nor deceive us. And so on… Meditating on the commandments is meditating on God's actions.

And these commandments, expressed in our languages ​​in the future tense, and in the Hebrew language in the imperfect tense, can be understood as both orders and promises:

If you learn to live with God, you will see: you will not kill.

If you learn to live with God, you will see: you will not be an adulterer.

If you learn to live with God, you will see: you will not steal.

If you learn to live with God, you will see: you will not lie.

If you learn to live with God, you will see: you will not covet.

The commandments are as much a promise of what God wants to do in us as they are an order to be observed.

Faced with the task ahead, Saint Teresa allowed to grow in her heart both a great desire to conform to God's will and a great desire for holiness—for holiness is nothing other than a human life fulfilled for humanity: to be holy is to have attained the fulfillment of one's life—and at the same time, she acknowledged her own poverty and her inability to achieve it on her own. In her Offering to Merciful Love, which she made on June 9, 1895, and which she wrote down two days later, she addressed herself to the entire Trinity:

I desire to fulfill your will perfectly and to attain the degree of glory that you have prepared for me in your kingdom; in short, I desire to be holy, but I feel my powerlessness and I ask you, O my God, to be my holiness yourself.

This is justice that surpasses that of the Pharisees!

And when Thérèse delves deeper into very concrete aspects of fraternal charity, she exclaims:

Ah! Lord, I know that you command nothing impossible; you know my weakness and imperfection better than I do; you know full well that I could never love my sisters as you love them if you yourself, O my Jesus, did not still love them in me. (Manuscript C 12, v°)

The justice that surpasses that of the Pharisees is that of Jesus. And for us, it is about letting Jesus live in us, love in us, believe in us, hope in us. That is why next Sunday, the first Sunday of Lent, we will ask for this in the opening prayer of Mass:

Almighty God, you who invite us each year to live Lent in truth, grant us to progress in the understanding of the mystery of Christ and to seek its realization through a life that corresponds to it.

The goal of this great season of Lent and Easter that is about to begin is to progress in the understanding of the mystery of ChristThat is to say, to grow in intimacy with Jesus: that Jesus may live more and more in us! We come, Sunday after Sunday, to enter into the sacrifice of Christ through the Eucharist. We come to offer ourselves to the Father, through Jesus, with Him and in Himso that Jesus could live by us, with us and in usThis is the loving Covenant into which we entered through baptism.

Therefore, we must nurture our relationship with Jesus in order to live in truth and goodness. We must truly desire—and decide to—live in constant companionship with Jesus, who wants to make his home within us. Jesus is not only à côté He wants to come and make his home with us. in U.S.

Finally, and this is not a negligible point, is the end of this Gospel: Let your word be yes if it's yes, no if it's noWe know the power of lies at work in our world today, amplified by many digital means… It is essential that we hear the Lord calling us to speak the truth, always. And this is demanding! Thérèse, at the end of her life, speaks of this several times. She says, and these are notes from her sister Mother Agnes, in the Yellow Notebook:

I was very young when my aunt gave me a story to read that greatly surprised me. I saw that a boarding school mistress was being praised because she knew how to skillfully extricate herself from difficult situations without hurting anyone's feelings. I particularly noticed this sentence: "She would say to this one: You're not wrong; to that one: You're right." And I thought to myself: That's not right! That mistress should have had no fears and should have told her little girls they were wrong when they were.

And now I haven't changed my mind. I'm having much more trouble, I admit, because it's always so easy to blame those who are absent, and that immediately calms the one who complains. Yes, but… I'm doing the exact opposite. If I'm not loved, so be it! I tell the whole truth; let no one come to me if they don't want to know it. (CJ 18.4.3)

And on the very day of her death, she said:

Yes, it seems to me that I have never sought anything but the truth; yes, I have understood the humility of the heart… It seems to me that I am humble.

Everything I've written about my desires for suffering. Oh! It's all so true!

…And I do not regret having given myself over to Love.

Oh no! I don't regret it, on the contrary!

(CJ September 30)

Amen.