Saint John makes a remarkably contemporary-sounding statement at the conclusion of today’s Gospel. It’s psycho-anthropological tone is worthy of Dr. Phil: “Jesus would not trust himself to them…because he knew them all, and did not need anyone to tell him about human nature. He himself understood it well.”
Which brings us back to that rather long reading from Exodus (I think they’re getting us ready for Holy Week!) in which the Lord gives us ten commandments, each based on his knowledge of the humans he had created:
The first one is simple: Follow God and him alone. The God who is one, constant, unchangeable, faithful and just: the source of all that is good and loving and true. For the very purpose for our being is to become like him.
He is almighty, merciful, and infinitely beneficent. As the Catechism observes: “Who could not place all hope in him? Who could not love him when contemplating the treasures of goodness and love he has poured out on us?”
And the second commandment is just like it: You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain. A child interprets this commandment as a prohibition against swearing or saying bad words. But it is so much more than that. For the name of the Lord is Holy and he reveals it to those who believe in him, inviting them into the intimacy of his friendship. It is the name to be cherished and adored.
You know what it’s like to say the name of your closest friend out loud? It calls him to mind and to heart. So too, with the name of the Lord.
When we say the name of Jesus, we are called to bow our heads as a sign of respect. For, as Saint Paul reminds us, his is the name above every other at which every knee must bend in the heavens and on earth and under the earth, for Jesus Christ is Lord.
Perhaps that is why one of the most beautiful prayers, originating with the first monks of Christendom, consists only in the Divine name: just repeating over and over again: Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.
And then there is the third commandment: to “keep holy the Lord’s day,” which is why we are gathered here, on a day when we refrain from working for ourselves and rest only in him. “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.”
And then the commandments tell us how to love like God.
First to love those who first loved us, our father and mother. For just as we must love our heavenly father who created our first parents, so we must love and honor those who conceived us in an act of love, nurtured and cared for us in self-sacrificing love.
And the next time you go to the nursing home, remember the sage advice of Sirach:
“O son, help your father in his old age…even if he is lacking in understanding, show forbearance; …Whoever forsakes his father is like a blasphemer, and whoever angers his mother is cursed by the Lord.”
But so great is the love which God has implanted in our hearts that it overflows to all the world. So, you shall not kill, certainly, but even more you shall cherish all whom God has made.
I am made to love you, not just as I love myself but as I love God. For every human being, from the weakest to the strongest, from the most powerful to the most vulnerable possesses an inherent dignity which makes us fit only for love.
It is that same human dignity which is violated when people are used as things for our entertainment, occasions for our passing pleasure, rather than mysteries to be loved. Thus, the sixth commandment.
We are called to love one another with a chaste love, a pure love which desires only the happiness and holiness of the other without self-interest. True love means that I desire only that you be led closer to God, to know that perfect peace which comes from doing God’s will and drawing closer to him.
God’s will is that all sexual activity, all acts of corporal procreation have loving meaning only with the Sacrament of Marriage and that anything short of that is a dead end and cannot lead us to holiness and truth. In the words of the Catechism, “The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him…[tolerating] neither a double life nor duplicity in speech.”
The seventh commandment, as well, is rooted in love, refusing to steal from anyone, keep something that belongs to anyone, committing fraud, paying unjust wages, or taking advantage of someone in light of their ignorance or hardship.
And just as one sin leads to another, so greed leads to lies, for at the root of every evil is the lie, as Eve learned from the serpent in the Garden of Eden. We who seek to be like Jesus, seek to follow the one who is the Truth; and the opposite of Jesus is Satan, the father of lies. So the next time you are tempted to “fib” or tell “a little white lie” just ask yourself, who are you pleasing. Jesus or Satan?
And finally, the last two commandments are about the kind of lying which says that everything is mine and is destined to make me happy: the lie that people are things whose purpose is to bring me pleasure and the purpose of life is to grab for all the gusto I can get, no matter who gets bought or sold and no matter who gets hurt.
Ten Commandments, which the Church asks us to reflect on this Lent as a sort of Examination of Conscience. And she gives them to us because no one has to tell her about our human nature. And she knows that in these ten little commands, we are given the key to happiness in this life and in the next.
