Go to a Catholic Mass and then go to a Jewish Shabbat service, and you will have two very-different experiences. Or attend a Seder (the Jewish meal/liturgy that celebrates the first night of Passover) and compare that to a Christian meal on Good Friday or on Easter, for that matter. If you do that, you will quickly see that we Christians have traditions, rules and liturgies that have diverged significantly from those of the Jewish tradition. We don't follow Jewish dietary restrictions, or require circumcision. We allow "work" on the Sabbath-- maybe too much. But if you go to an apartment building where Orthodox Jews live you will find that the elevators stop at all floors on the Sabbath-- pushing the buttons is "work" and thus prohibited. The list of the laws and rules that the Jews followed in Jesus' day and which we Christians do not follow now could go on, of course, but you get the point. So what in the world do we think Jesus is talking about in today's Gospel (Mt 5: 17- 19) when He says that He did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, and that anyone who breaks one of the least of the commandments of the Law and teaches others to do so will be called least in the Kingdom? Isn't He saying that we are to be as scrupulous about following the Jewish law as possible, more scrupulous even than the Pharisees? We don't have to look very far into Church history to see that the idea that you had to follow all the Jewish rules to become a follower of Christ was hotly debated, and rejected, at the very beginning. In the Acts of the Apostles (see Chapter 15) we read of the Jerusalem Council, called by the early Church to consider the idea that you had to be Jewish to be Christian, which ultimately required Gentile Christians only to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from meat of strangled aminals and from blood (Acts of the Apostles 15:20). So did the early Church just ignore what Jesus said in the portion of Matthew's Gospel that we read today about following all of the Law? Maybe the answer to this question depends on what we think Jesus meant by the "Law" and the "Prophets." We know that Jesus Himself taught some things that were contrary to the prevailing understanding of Jewish laws at the time-- around the sabbath and around dietary restrictions, for example. We know that Jesus articulated a different standard with respect to divorce. So if Jesus is saying that His followers have to abide by existing Jewish laws-- customs, rules, dietary restrictions and the like-- He is being more-than-a-little inconsistent, since He wasn't following or preaching those same rules Himself. Moreover, Jesus often criticizes the Pharisees for their single-minded interest in observing outward requirements, while ignoring the purpose of the requirements and the spirit in which the rule-following is done. So Jesus doesn't generally seem all that interested in the fine-points of Jewish custom and law. A bit later in Matthew's Gospel Jesus answers the question of what He means by "the Law and the Prophets." He says: "So, in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." (Mt 7:12) Or, as Paul says in his letter to the Galatians: "The entire law is summed up in a single command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (Gal 5:14) So whe Jesus talks about the need for us to follow the Law in all its details, He means the Law of loving our neighbor, of doing for our neighbor as we would want done for us, in ways large and small. He is commanding us to consider the consequences of our actions on those around us, and on the world as a whole. He wants us to remember that no act is too small to do if that act is done in love for another. When Jesus talks about fulfilling the Law, it is the Law in that sense of self-sacrificing love in which He is its fulfillment. He fulfills the Law by His action on the cross, the act by which He does for others what we would have done for us, and the act by which He shows His ultimate love for humanity. Big things (like the cross) matter, but small things matter too, and they add up. Jesus reminds us of that today when He talks of the importance of honoring "the least of these commandments." Let's remember that it is in the small things that we most-often truly act in love, and abide by the Law.