Whenever families gather, depending on their views, there can be certain unwritten rules that we prefer to follow, certain topics that we would rather not address.
Sometimes it’s sports.
Sometimes it’s politics.
Most of the time religion is among them.
…and yet these topics keep coming up.
I was at a get together with friends I hadn’t seen in a while, and the same thing happened: religion was brought to the forefront. The familiar arguments kept coming up:
I can find God everywhere, not just in a church.
I don’t need to go to church to find God.
What’s true for you may not be true for me.
This is MY truth.
At the risk of turning this into a theological homily and losing some of you along the way, it is, however, important that we consider some of these issues more seriously. This Sunday, the Liturgy presents us the issue of religion and morality. We hear in the first reading that Moses handed down the Law to the people of God:
“Observe these commandments for thus will give you evidence
of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations.”
so, is morality out there or in here?
Moses gave the people of God a series of commandments, with the belief that that if you followed them, you were in the clear, safe!
But then, in the Gospel, Jesus comes into the picture and criticizes some of the Pharisees for their hypocrisy in complying with the law only externally, even to the point of overdoing it: washing—not just their hands, but their entire arms—while their hearts were far from God. We could say that Jesus brings into the picture the subjective side of the Law. So, is Jesus saying that morality is not out there but rather in here, in me?
Jesus uses the parable of the prodigal son to illustrate how merely following the law is not enough. You know the story: One son leaves, squanders his possessions, comes back and reconciles with his father; while his older, “obedient” brother never left. The obedient son admonishes the father, citing his adherence to his law, to the letter. He’d always been a perfectly obedient man, yet his heart was full of envy for his brother, and now resentment toward his father.
what is truly defiling you?
So which one is it? Do we follow the external Law- the commandments, Scripture and Tradition – or do we follow the Law “inscribed on our hearts” (Jer 31:33)?
Jesus seems to be advocating for the second one. The things that “come from within your heart defile” you (Mt 15:18): thoughts of unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, folly, arrogance. Jesus is not holding back, is He?!
Among the many great contributions that our Christian faith has made to the West is one on which all our human laws are based: the concept of a moral conscience. Jesus never spoke directly about conscience, but frequently, as in today’s Gospel, He seems to be giving us glimpses of a law written in our hearts.
What does He say about conscience?
What does the Church teach about conscience? This is direct from the Catechism:
Deep within his being, man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself, but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths.
It was John Henry Newman, Episcopalian convert to the Catholic faith, who called this sacred space where God speaks to Man, his conscience “the aboriginal vicar of Christ.”
So we come back to the question: do we follow this internal morality or the external one?
BOTH/AND
Well, like most things Catholic, it’s not either/ or.
It’s both/and.
Is it Sacred Scripture that is the source of revelation, or is it sacred Tradition?
Both Scripture and Tradition.
Was Jesus God or man?
Both true God and true Man
Is it grace that saves you or your works?
Both grace and how you respond to it by works
Is it the external moral law from God we should follow, or the moral law of our conscience?
It’s both. Jesus “did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it” (Mt 5:17). The message of Jesus builds upon the external law.
From the moment of your baptism, you were given a vocation, a calling, a true Power: To be priest, prophet, and king. Think about it! You are a prophet!
St. James in today’s readings sees it as a call to be “not only listeners of the word” but also “doers of the word, lest we deceive ourselves.” And it is so easy to deceive ourselves. Sometimes when our conscience speaks to us, we feel bad: we notice someone who is being taken advantage of, we stumble upon a person in need, we regret something we said or did—and we feel bad about it.
If we just feel bad about it and don’t DO anything our conscience prompts us, we end up disregarding it and deceiving ourselves.
feelings, feelings, nothing more than feelings…
It’s not just about listening to the word inside – This feels bad! – but to do something about it. If your conscience is telling you that you’ve neglected your marriage or your children, it’s not just feeling bad about it that brings resolution. You need to exercise the word of God speaking to you in your heart.
If you see someone at work being taken advantage of or someone at school being bullied, don’t just feel bad about them. Do something about it! Respond to the voice of your conscience regardless of the reason they’re being taken advantage of: race, legal status, sexuality, skin color. Do not deceive yourself into believing that just because you feel bad about something or for someone, that that makes you a good person.
Likewise, if you feel bad about a sin you committed, DO something: take responsibility for it, go back to the Father´s house, confess it, and reconcile with your heavenly Father and with your community. We could consider the following phrase:
Sometimes people use the argument of conscience to justify their behavior. My conscience told me I should do this…to not do that…to say this and not that. But not every conscience is well formed. We have the responsibility to form our conscience, to pray about the issues at hand, to ask for counsel, to discern and struggle with the movements of the Word in our hearts.
We are accountable to Truth, and our conscience will keep nudging at us, if we continue to form it in God’s Word: Make amends, take responsibility and do something.
There is another sentiment among teens:
You are perfect in every way, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
A Millennial´s love of self is inflamed with pride at the belief that I am perfect in every way.
NEWS FLASH!
You are perfect in ONE sense and one alone: you are perfect in your God-given dignity as made in His image and likeness, as a son, a daughter of God. Everything else about us is not perfect but perfectible. If you’re already perfect in every single way, what have you to accomplish? What do you need to overcome? You need to achieve nothing in your life. On the other hand, if you are a perfectible then you have the awesome responsibility to become perfect for the heavenly Father.
Be perfect like my heavenly Father is perfect. Mt 5:48
That is why prayer is so crucial. To pray is to come into the sanctuary of our conscience, to challenge our own intentions and emotions, and to find the courage to take responsibility for those wrong actions and missed opportunities. A clear conscience is the only thing that brings true freedom. At the end of our lives, it is the aboriginal vicar of Christ which will judge us.
God knows our capacity for self-destruction, so He knows we need a need a moral law. Think of the moral law, the commandments, as a freeway.
You’re driving, following the laws, using the blinker (and judging everybody else who doesn’t use it!). Suddenly, you begin to drift off. Your car begins to shake because you’re driving over the rumble strips on the shoulder. Immediately you realize that something’s wrong and you need to correct your course.
That startling movement of the car is your conscience, the voice of God talking to you. We are free to ignore it, but we would wreck.
Correcting our path starts with small steps. Prayer is crucial because it helps us to identify when we have broken the law of Christ. Then we must take responsibility, make amends, confess our sins, ask for forgiveness for the grace to sin no more. Keep moving forward, knowing that it is Christ saving and perfecting you.
May Mary show us the wisdom to form our conscience with sincerity, the strength to respond accordingly, that we may not deceive ourselves and that we may be doers of the word, and not just listeners.
