"For I say unto you, that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. 5:20).

The righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, referred to by Jesus, was the application of the Law of Moses, which defended: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; hand for hand, foot for foot, "and so on. Indeed, it is a law of justice, based, according to some authors, on the Code of Hammurabi, a few centuries before Moses. Undeniably, it was a breakthrough in human history, for it made the man aware that by committing an aggression to someone, he gave the aggressor the right to repay aggression to the same extent.

Jesus, with His authority and His love, inaugurated a new era in Humanity, the Age of Mercy, as it is in the Sermon on the Mount: "But I say to you, Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you and pray for those who persecute you and slander you"(Matt. 5:43). These teachings of Jesus were transcribed and commented upon by Allan Kardec in The Gospel According to Spiritism, chapter 12.

There are people who, when they hear this greater teaching of Jesus, exclaim: "Love to the enemies, this is something for saints and I am not holy. How can I pray for those who persecute me?" Others not only feel incapable of praying, but also think that if they prayed they would give strength to the enemy. Still others argue that if they do not take a punitive attitude, offenders will never learn that they should not harm the neighbor...

However, if it is analyzed by those who have "eyes to see and ears to hear," it will be easy to see that the teaching of Jesus is for all those who are willing to become Christians...

Love for those who do not love us is exactly what distinguishes Jesus' teaching from that secularly known by the Jews:

"...You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemies". (Mt 5:43)

The Master is very clear when he reinforces the teaching, so that there is no doubt: "... if you love only those who love you, what will be your reward? Do not the tax collectors also do this? "(Matthew 5:46)

And it goes further: "If only your brothers you salute, what do you do with this more than the others? Do not the pagans do the same? "(Mt 5:47). The pagans referred to by Jesus were not the unbaptized, as would be interpreted today. Pagans, to the Jews, were all who did not share their religion. In this case, they were the Romans, the Syrians, and the Greeks. Jesus wanted to point out that even the other peoples, who did not believe in God, loved their friends. However, to be a disciple of the Master, it would take a step forwards...

As it turns out, Jesus does not cast the teaching as an abstract maxim, or a theological concept to be repeated within the temples as a magical formula, amidst rituals, to please God. The Master teaches that this is the way of those who want to be His disciples. And for the sake of clarity, He give examples, using people of His time, of daily living.

Always calling the creatures to reflection, Jesus says to them: "If your righteousness is no more abundant than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (Mt 5:20). In this passage, we see that the Master invites man to transcend the simple limits of justice, which was valid until then: "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, a blow for a blow”. (Exodus 21:24, 25) Those who claimed to be followers of Moses, who were bound only to the idea of ​​righteousness, thought and acted like this.

As Nature does not jump, we must understand that the first step to love our enemies is not to repay evil with evil. It is necessary to walk in stages, as The Gospel according to Spiritism teaches us, in chapter 12: first we learn not to let the thorn - of resentment and sorrow - enter our heart. Hence, the need for vigilance and prayer. By exercising vigilance over ourselves, we can verify what we are keeping within ourselves. Through prayer, we have gradually been able to expel the gall of hurt, the desire for revenge and malice. Let us, therefore, proceed to a review of what we hold in our hearts. This inner cleansing is extremely healthy, for by replacing bad feelings with good ones, we are improving our mood and even our physical health. Moreover, having no hurt, bitterness, resentment, rancor, acrimony within us, and our relationship with our neighbor will be better and better, for as the Gospel teaches us: "For the mouth speaketh out of the abundance of his heart". (Luke 6:45)

This is how we learn to reciprocate evil with good. It is a slow process, to be worked within us over the centuries. That extraordinary ability to forgive, Gandhi did not receive it as a grace, nor did he get it from day to day. He developed it through his life-after-life effort, following what the Gospel says: "Let your light so shine before men..." (Matt. 5:16). We all have the divine light as an inheritance equally shared among all the children of God. To evolve means the effort of the Spirit to make it shine, according to the recommendation of Jesus.

Forgiveness, with the erasing of any remnant of hurt, is essential for the progress of creatures. Teaching us this, Jesus put the appeasement effort above a high point of the Jewish cult, which was an offering of the blood of a sacrificial animal, kept in a vessel and taken solemnly to the altar as an offering to God for the remission of a sin committed. Jesus does not criticize such a practice, but he uses it by saying: "If you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave there your offering and go first and be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift". (Mt 5:23, 24)

Spiritism, as an evolutionary doctrine, teaches us that sanctification cannot be achieved through the effort of others, nor through prayers, promises, or graces fallen from Heaven. Progress, the spiritualization of the human creature, is an individual, constant, non-transferable and conscious task. And the Spirit who only collects received offenses, desires to retaliate, or just grievances, has stopped on the path of spiritual progress.

To grief is to store spiritual sickness within us, a disease which, most of the time, transforms into physical illness. To live in suffering is to cultivate cancer in the soul. There are people who harbor grievances as if they were precious jewels, kept in beautiful cases that easily open to show others these received and "forgiven" aggressions. This practice not only damages mental health, but also physical health. Grief is cancer in the soul, which often becomes cancer in the physical body. He who acts wisely seeks to be free from pain while incarnate, for if physical cancer is in the grave, the cancer of the soul will have to be resolved in the spiritual life

Another serious spiritual disease is remorse. Remorse, the forerunner of repentance, is a good step that must be used here on this Earth while we are incarnate. But there are people who think they are doomed to areas of suffering after death because they made certain mistakes and hope to rescue them in areas of suffering in the Spiritual World after disincarnating. In Chico Xavier’s mediumistic literature there are at least two examples capable of showing us that not always the destiny of the one who has made mistakes is a zone of suffering.

In the work “I am back”, by Brother Jacob, psychographics by Chico Xavier, there is the report of a Spirit that was being led by Bezerra de Menezes into a group of newly disincarnated, to spiritual colonies organized in the Good. At one point, one of these Spirits, when he saw the light of a spiritual colony, he said: "I do not deserve to go to the light, for I have killed a man during my life on Earth". Bezerra was not shaken. He only asked Jacob to say a prayer to rebalance the caravan.

In the book Speaking to the Earth, Abel Gomes (Spirit) says: "Beyond the grave, we continue the work begun or we are slaves of the evil that we practice on Earth". In this long chapter titled "News", Abel Gomes relates something that astonishes those who hope to find after death the Umbral described by Andre Luiz, in an erroneous interpretation, a Spiritist version of Purgatory: "Old acquaintance of my private relations murdered a certain companion of struggle, in a deplorable moment of insanity, and despite being free of human justice, which restored him to freedom, he experienced a long martyrdom of lacerated conscience, surrendering for more than four decades to charity with active labor for the good of neighbor. Doing this, he won the admiration and affection of various benefactors of the Superior Spirituality, who welcomed him when he was removed from his physical experience, placing him in a respectable place so that he could continue in the rectifying work".

Many people, still influenced by the idea of ​​Purgatory, which is not actually in the New Testament but was invented by theologians in the sixth century, think that only suffering can redeem the guilty. This is a serious misunderstanding, because it contradicts Peter's teaching: "Love covers the multitude of sins" (I Peter, 4: 8).

The Spiritist Doctrine, in reliving the liberating teachings of Jesus, brings us in his literature messages that make us look at life differently, as Emmanuel teaches us in his book Before Jesus: "Whenever Divine Justice seeks us in the exact address for the execution of the judgments that we draw against ourselves, according to the laws of cause and effect, if it finds us in service to our neighbor, Divine Mercy orders that the execution be suspended for an indefinite period".

Jesus began a new cycle of human evolution, teaching the path for man to become angelic, in order to transcend the limits of justice, reaching those of Mercy.