“If
you choose you can keep the commandments.”
If
you choose, you CAN keep the commandments!
Some
people think that it is impossible to keep the commandments, but the
Bible disagrees with this view of the world:
If
you choose, you can
keep the commandments, all of them.
The
third commandment, keep
holy the Lord's day:
“Oh,” someone might say, “it's so difficult to come to Mass
each and every weekend! Let alone the Holy Days of Obligation. I'm
so busy! There are so many other activities scheduled over the
weekends!”
“If
you choose you can keep the commandments.”
The
sixth commandment, Thou
shalt not commit adultery:
“But I don't feel that I love my spouse any longer. Instead, I
have fallen in love with someone new. How can I not follow my
heart?”
“If
you choose you can keep the commandments.”
The
seventh commandment, Thou
shalt not steal:
“I want to stop, but I steal because I'm addicted to drugs,” or,
“to gambling. Is it really possible for me to overcome this habit
of sin in my life?”
“If
you choose you can keep the commandments.” You really can, with
God's help. This is what He promises by teaching us in this passage
of Scripture that we can
keep the commandments.
Recently
I was speaking with some first-graders about the fourth commandment,
Honor thy
father and thy mother.
About how important it is to listen to mom and dad, to do what they
ask without complaining, and even to do things without being asked:
like how if you know that mom and dad would want you to pick up your
toys when you're done playing with them, how much it shows your love
for them if you do it even before they ask you to. As we were
finishing our discussion of honor
thy
father and mother,
one of the girls in the class asked, “Is there a commandment about
brothers
and sisters?”
Without
missing a beat, one of the little boys said: “Yeah: Thou
shalt not kill!”
That
little boy was on to something. God's commandments really do give us
guidance for the whole of life. And this is what Jesus teaches us in
today's Gospel:
“You
have heard that it was said [...], You shall not kill; and whoever
kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry
with his brother will be liable to judgment.”
What
many took to be a prohibition only against murder, Jesus teaches to
be a prohibition even against harboring resentment and anger in our
hearts.
“You
have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say
to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed
adultery with her in his heart. [… And] I say to you, whoever
divorces his wife—unless the marriage is unlawful—causes her to
commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits
adultery.”
What
many took to be a prohibition against being unfaithful in marriage,
Jesus teaches to be something much broader: not only is marrying a
divorced person—unless that first 'marriage' has been ruled
'unlawful' or invalid
by a Church Tribunal—not only is marrying a divorced person a state
of public and permanent adultery, but what is more, this commandment
touches on a whole range of moral teachings: not only is the
Christian forbidden from committing adultery, but the Christian is
also forbidden from giving in to lust and self-pleasure, from viewing
pornography, from using contraception, from having sex outside of
marriage, and so on.
And
whatever other commandment there may be, Jesus says to us, “Whoever
breaks one of the least of these commandments […] will be called
least in the kingdom of heaven.” “I tell you,” He says,
“unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and
Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of Heaven.” The scribes
and Pharisees were known for fastidiously observing even the smallest
details
of the law, and Jesus says that if we want to enter Heaven, we
have to be more righteous than they were!,
because we have to allow God's law to shape not only our actions
and decisions
but
even our thoughts
and
our desires.
Is it possible to live this
way?
It is possible to live
this way?
“If
you choose you can keep the commandments.”
If
we thought that Jesus was going to make things easier for us, easier
than the Ten Commandments and the law God gave in the Old Testament,
tonight we heard Jesus
say: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law […] 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.” Jesus really does expect us to
keep the whole moral law as proposed and taught by the Church. But
He knows our human weakness, and so He has given us the Sacraments.
He teaches us in tonight's Gospel a beautiful lesson about the
Sacrament of Reconciliation:
“If
you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother
has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go
first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer
your gift.”
When
Christ speaks of the 'gift you bring to the altar,' He is speaking
about not just the bread and wine that become his Body and Blood, and
still less about the money that you put in the basket when it comes
around, but He's speaking about the gift of your heart. When you
come to Mass, when the bread and wine are placed on the altar, can
you put your heart on the altar? Can you give your whole heart to
God? Because this is what it means to keep the commandments. And if
there's anything that divides your heart—if you have given a part
of your heart to resentment or to lust or to selfish desires rather
than to God—“Go first,” Christ says, “and be reconciled.”
If we have failed to keep the commandments, the Sacrament of
Reconciliation is there for us. Indeed, even if we've failed in a
truly spectacular way, committed a mortal sin: that is reason to
“leave your gift there at the altar,” to refrain from receiving
Holy Communion until we have followed Christ's command to “go first
and be reconciled [...], and then come and offer your gift,”—but
yes, even if we've failed in some particularly humiliating fashion,
nothing can separate us from the love of God.
The
moral law seems difficult to keep, and “God's wisdom” in this is
sometimes “mysterious and hidden,” but the Scriptures teach us
that
“If you choose you can keep the commandments, [and] they will save you.”
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