All of Christ's commands are invitations

“God gave us free agency, and then gave us the commandments to keep us free.” - Cecil Blount DeMille (1881 – 1959) American film director

Gospel Text: (MT 5:17-19)
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
will pass from the law,
until all things have taken place.
Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments
and teaches others to do so
will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven.
But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments
will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”

What did Jesus mean when he told his disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill”?

During his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had just delivered his beatitudes, and he would follow right after with his teachings on the commandments. During this time on the Mount, Jesus, the New Moses, asserts himself as the authoritative interpreter of the Torah, superseding all previous understandings of the law. He brings forth a deeper and richer meaning. Jesus emphasizes that the essence of the Ten Commandments are to be summed up in two words, reverence and love. We are to reverence and love God. And we are to reverence and love one another. The whole of the law and the prophets’ rest on this. Jesus himself fulfills the law by his teaching and his life. Moreover, in his person, he fulfills all that the prophets had foretold.

Reverence and love — the essence of the commandments — will never pass away.

During this season of Lent, we are called to remember that just as the Ten Commandments were operative for Jesus’ disciples 2,000 years ago, they remain in full force for us today: We are to love God and to love one another.