Word to the Wise
Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - Wednesday in the 28th Week in Ordinary Time
[Gal 5:18-25 and Luke 11:42-46]Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh with its passions and esires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit. [Galatians]
One of the most dangerous expressions I know of is: "There's no law against it!" This argument justifies an awful lot of immoral activity. It places all human decision-making and behavior strictly in the legal realm. Furthermore, as St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us, no law-maker can account for every circumstance, but only for the majority of circumstances ("ut in pluribus"). This means there will also be "loopholes" in all laws. If everything is regulated, original sin will guarantee folks looking for ways "around the law." But, what happens if all written law, especially those laws which regulate day to day life and what we call "the rule of law" - a kind of social contract that oversees our daily existence - no longer bind? This is what St. Paul is getting at in today's first scripture from his impassioned letter to the Galatians.
For St. Paul, there is a new social contract that replaces the Mosaic Law that governed day to day existence for Jews. This contract (my term) is represented in faith which is officially confirmed through baptism. He first lists all the "works of the flesh" that the Mosaic law would, if followed, prohibit. But, if that law no longer binds, what is to be the guide? St. Paul appeals to the Spirit of Christ as the new law and lists the "fruits of the Spirit" as the guide: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law." In short, to follow the Spirit means to embrace what is good in life in any society, but to do it as a matter of faith in Christ, following his example.
For his Gentile converts, Paul's list would have been found in Greco-Roman ethics, but for Jews, it was in the Mosaic Law. If that law was taken away, something had to replace it. For Paul, this was the Spirit, given in baptism. In our own time, if we hear the argument, whether in secular or religious contexts that "there's no law against it," we need to take care to know that this doesn't make something right. AMEN
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