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Don't mess with your faith
With the phrase “Don’t mess with Texas,” Texans mean, among other things, that here we try to respect laws, that our police officers and judges are strict and that we believe the old Roman motto: “Dura lex est lex,” meaning, the law, to be law, must be firm.
Our appreciation of the law isn’t just because it is firm. In some circumstances, such as the death penalty, the law can be too harsh. We appreciate the law because it guarantees the common good an orderly society.
The moral law, which the church teaches in the name of Jesus Christ, is similar, but it is infinitely more important for our lives than human laws, because both our happiness on earth and our eternal salvation depend on it.
The Compendium of the Catechism of the Church explains that “the moral law is a work of divine Wisdom” which inscribed on the human heart “the ways and the rules of conduct that lead to the promised beatitude and forbids the ways that turn away from God.” (Compendium, 415)
These norms that are inscribed on the heart of every person are not an imposition from God, as many times they are mistakenly thought of. Instead, they enable one to discern by reason the good and the bad. That’s why the Catechism reminds us that the natural law is “universal and immutable”; so much so that it “determines the basis of the duties and fundamental rights of the person, as well as those of the human community and civil law.” (Compendium, 416)
Even though the moral law is inscribed in every person’s heart, we, human beings, do not always listen to our own heart, and often do things that go against our own nature.
For this reason St. Augustine used to say that “God wrote on the tables of the Law what men did not read in their hearts.”
For this reason God gave us the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, which not only summarize the way for us to be more human, but also constitutes the foundation upon which human laws have been built for centuries and in numerous cultures.
At first sight, the Ten Commandments look like a long list of “no’s.” However, Jesus Christ has revealed to us the fullness and completion of this law: the “no’s” are, truly, the ancient expression of a totally new law; a law that is summed up in the commandment to love God and neighbor, and to love one another as Christ loved us. This law has also been inscribed in the human heart: it is the law of freedom that we received through our baptism and that must affect every aspect of our life.
God’s law, then, makes us free, and brings us happiness and salvation.
St. Vincent de Paul, this great French saint of charity, whose feast day we just celebrated on Sept. 27, after he saw the peaceful death of his friend, the bishop St. Francis de Sales, said: “God’s law sanctifies us, makes us free, fills us with joy and gives meaning to our life. How could we not follow it? Why not me? If he (St. Francis de Sales) could be a saint, why can’t I?
The same question should move our hearts today and throughout our life, because it is the law of God that allows us to fulfill the calling we all have received to be a saint. León Bloy, a French novelist, used to say: “there is only one sadness, and that is of not being a saint.”
Let us ask the intercession of all those saints who understood the liberating and sanctifying power of God’s law, so that we may be able to listen to it, to know it better, and above all to follow it, so that, after a life lived to the full, we may arrive to our final day, being able to use St. Paul’s words before God: “I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.” (2 Tim 4:7)
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