Word to the Wise
Thursday, October 23, 2025 - Thursday in the 29th Week in Ordinary Time
[Rom 6:19-23 and Luke 12:49-53]For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. [Romans]
Yesterday, St. Paul presented us with a bit of dilemma. What should we do when confronted with an ethical situation in which there is no written law to tell us what we should/must do? Paul himself claimed that before his conversion anything not prohibited by the Mosaic Law was left to the individual to decide. It was the prohibited things that constituted "sin," along with deliberate acts against the law. When Jesus ate and drank with sinners and tax collectors, this made him "unclean" because the people he sat with were less than perfect in observance or engaged in work that made them "unclean" in the eyes of the Mosaic Law and thus in the eyes of the Pharisees who were meticulous in their observance. Indeed, a person's intentions did not matter. If they failed to do what was prescribed, they suffered the consequences.
What happened to the Gentiles who knew nothing about Jewish observance? It's not as if there was no moral "law" among them. Greco-Roman tradition did have a moral content as we know from the writings of Plato and Aristotle and Cicero, among many others. For St. Paul, after his conversion,the first source of "law" was to be found in faith in Christ, manifested by baptism. The moral law was written on the human heart to be understood in the light of Christ. St. Thomas Aquinas would appeal to what we call "the Natural Law" which is available to human reason. In the absence of legislation or other formal guidelines, a Christian must be guided by the light of faith - the "new law of Christ." [ST I-II, q. 106] aided by reason.
Everyday, it seems, we are presented with those "gray areas" that are not covered by some written or official rule. We have guidance from those appointed to lead us in the form of the Catechism and Code of Canon Law, etc., but these are meant as "guard rails" and cannot cover every conceivable situation. The scriptures give us the example of Jesus to provide light, aided by the divine gift of human reason, to enable us to do the best we can under the circumstances. AMEN