6th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A February 15, 2026
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
Ladies, if you had walked into the house yesterday to find three roses and a box of chocolates inside a grocery bag on the counter and him off playing a game or something, how would you have reacted? It’s certainly better than if he ignored the day completely. Now compare that to if you walked in the house to find him holding those same three roses, smiling and greeting you with enthusiasm, if he had that same box of chocolates, but presented them after serving up your favorite meal?
If the rule for valentine’s day is “get flowers and chocolates,” and the guys in both scenarios got the same amount of flowers and chocolate, that should be enough, right? Does the difference in how they did it matter? Of course it does! To express love to someone means you follow the “rules” of a relationship, but anyone who understands love knows that it’s about way more than the rules. Doing the minimum is necessary and sometimes it’s the best you’ve got, but it should never be the standard. Love needs rules, but it needs more than just rules.
That’s exactly what the first reading and Gospel are getting at. Sirach is a straightforward reminder that God never gives “license to sin” to anyone, ever. The commandments are the rules of love and no one gets to break them. If someone tells you that love means you can ignore the commandments, that you can commit sin for a “higher purpose,” they are wrong! No pope, bishop, priest, or parent can give you permission for blasphemy, murder, adultery, lies, or theft.
Obviously, not every rule is as universal and objective as the 10 commandments. Some rules are temporary, cultural things. Even the way we observe Valentine’s day is a mostly modern western thing and some cultures don’t do it that way. But every human being must follow the 10 commandments in every time, culture, and circumstance.
And while we’re at it, every Catholic is required to follow the rules of the Church. Those rules include guidelines on the exceptions, but we can’t just decide on our own that a rule doesn’t apply to me. Mass every Sunday, confession once a year, no communion with mortal sin, getting married in the Church… these matter. Take Lent for example. If you’re between 18 and 59 and healthy, you have to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. If you’re 14 or older, you have to avoid meat on Ash Wednesday and every Friday of Lent. There are exceptions for the sick and those pregnant or nursing. To break those rules arbitrarily, however, is a mortal sin. It doesn’t matter if you think a dry piece of ham is more penitential than fried fish; the first requirement is obedience
So, start there. Just don’t stop there; go on to the important question: Do I follow these rules with love? Do we do the minimum, meet the technical requirements, and then go back to living for our own selfish desires? Sure, a crawfish boil on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday is technically not eating meat and you can technically call it one meal to count as “fasting,” but come on, really? You think Jesus, hanging on the cross suffocating and bleeding to death would look over at you drinking beer and polishing off 10 pounds would say “thanks for honoring my sacrifice with your fasting?” Is it against the rules? Technically, no. Is it a sin? Absolutely. It’s a pretty obvious violation of the spirit of the law.
And that’s what Jesus is getting at in the Gospel: the spirit of the law. To be clear again, the spirit of the law is not a justification to break the letter of the law. It is an to obey the law for the right reason, a call to shift our perspective from seeing the law of God as an obstacle to seeing it as a stepping stone. When your goal is to stay on the ground, a ladder might look like an obstacle, but if your goal is to get on the roof, it becomes a useful tool. No amount of wishful thinking about being on the roof lets you bypass the ladder. The roof is holiness and love of God, the rungs of the ladder are the commandments and laws of the Church.
Of course, it doesn’t take long for someone trying to climb that ladder… trying to follow God’s law to realize that, left to our own devices, we can’t keep all the commandments perfectly. Jesus isn’t here just to remind us of the spirit of the law, he isn’t here just to challenge us to go higher, he’s here to make it abundantly clear that we need help. It’s why Jesus reminds us that “you cannot make a single hair white or black.” For all the pretending and covering up we can do, we don’t have the power to truly change our biology, much less our hearts and souls. The kind of love and holiness Jesus asks of us requires a change of heart and a supernaturally powerful soul. In our fallenness, we want the wrong things and we are too weak to do the right things consistently.
And yet, our weakness does not justify ignoring the law of God. It does not mean we can give up on loving God, loving our neighbor, and striving for holiness. It means that this whole project, this whole way of life called Christianity isn’t really about morality. The morals matter and you cannot be a good Christian if you live a flagrantly immoral life, but they are not the goal. Jesus Christ is the goal and Jesus Christ can change our hearts to want what we ought to want. He can strengthen our souls to do what seems impossible. But he won’t do it against our wishes. He won’t do it in a way that bypasses our human nature. God designed human nature, so he’s not about to disregard it.
And human nature? It’s built on habits. It’s built processes and growth. It’s built on a union of body and soul. God can miraculously make food appear in your stomach, but you’d be sinning if you laid in bed and expected him to do so three times a day. God can miraculously change your mind to be free of an addiction, but you’d be sinning if you expect him to do that. No, instead he tells us to “cut off” even our right hand if it causes us to sin. Yes, that’s hyperbole, so don’t literally maim yourself. But, we all have things that we treat like they’re part of our bodies: computers, phones, TVs, toys, snacks, drinks, smokes… things we could get rid of if we’re serious about getting out of the sins they lead us to… or at least we could set real boundaries and accountability.
If you can’t get rid of something entirely, put it where others can see you. Use Covenant Eyes, Cold Turkey, Shift, Dumb Phone, Lock Me Out, or one of a dozen other programs designed to help with self-control – I use some of those things (links will be in the homily when I post it). Yes, they cost money which you should be willing to spend! If you can’t be bothered to spend time researching solutions and money using those solutions, then I don’t believe you want to stop sinning. And neither does God. He won’t bypass your human nature. God doesn’t expect you to be perfectly moral and holy – only he can do that for you – but he does expect you to form the habits and disciplines of a Christian! God will do things you can’t do for yourself, but he won’t do the things you can do for yourself but simply don’t do. You cannot discipline yourself into holiness, but you also cannot passively wait for it either. Admit your powerlessness, beg for grace, and do everything you can do to get better… and you’ll find God doing what you can’t do and expanding what you can do.
God is love. There are no shortcuts, no loopholes, no techniques to deal with him. There are in the end only two responses to God. Either you love him enough to put in the effort to love him more despite your failures… or you end up hating him. There are no alternatives and anyone who says there are is lying to you. So, choose love! Choose love one rule, one habit, one sacrament, one change of heart at a time.