Word to the Wise
Friday, July 26, 2019 - Friday in the 16th Week in Ordinary Time
[Exod 20:1-17 and Matt 13:18-23]"I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. You shall not have other gods besides me...…" [Exodus]
JULY 26 STS. JOACHIM AND ANN
These words begin the Ten Commandments. Every year, or so it seems, someone will take a survey to see how many Christians or Jews can recite the Ten Commandments. There are some awkward moments, to be sure. Most folks can come up with a bare majority, but remembering all ten seems to be a challenge. Yet these commandments form the fundamental moral code of much of the world. Amazingly, law suits are fought over any display on public property of the words that form these commandments because some see them as a religious creed, even if these same people live by them.
The first three commandments speak to the role of the sacred in community life. The common faith and its observance are a uniting force that gives a motive for the remaining seven. Those who believe that an "enlightened humanism" will keep the other seven in place are ignoring human nature! If we deny sacred faith, what would make us think that our neighbor, our family, our belongings, our lives and telling the truth are sacred at all? Our everyday experience just in American social, political and economic live shows that ignoring an accountability to God means anarchy.
However, these Ten Commandments are based on an even more fundamental law, as Jesus taught: love of God and neighbor. If we could remember those two laws, perhaps we wouldn't be worried about the ten we can't remember. AMEN