AIM: To show the place of God’s law in our lives.
An elderly monk, Father Benedict, was
returning to his monastery from a journey. With him was a young novice, Brother
Ardens. It had been raining and the road was muddy. When they came to a dip in
the road still covered with water, they found a beautiful young girl standing
there afraid to proceed, lest her beautiful long dress be soiled. “Come, dear,”
Father Benedict said when he saw her predicament. “I’ll carry you.” He picked
the girl up in his arms and carried her across to higher ground. She thanked
him, and the two monks walked on in silence.
When they reached the monastery,
Brother Ardens felt he had to say something about the incident he had
witnessed. “Monks are supposed to keep away from women, especially from
beautiful young girls. How could you pick up in your arms that girl we met on
the road?”
“Dear Brother Ardens,” the older monk
replied, “I put that girl down as soon as we reached dry ground. You have
carried her in your thoughts right into the monastery.”
The young novice was like the
Pharisees in the gospel reading we have just heard: zealous, as many young
people are, and determined to see all the rules and regulations carefully
observed. The ardent young monk never realized that this could mean failing in
something even more important: helping someone in need.
Two of our readings today are about
rules and regulations. In the first reading Moses tells the people “not to add
to God’s law or subtract from it.” He also tells them that the Ten Commandments,
which embody God’s law, are a privilege and a gift. “What great nation has
statutes and decrees that are as just as this whole law which I am setting
before you today?” The commandments are not fences to hem people in. They are
ten signposts pointing the way to fulfillment and happiness.
This view of God’s law as a special
privilege is central to Jewish religion. It was the view Jesus learned from Mary
and Joseph, and in the synagogue school at Nazareth
Religious people (and that means us)
can pervert God’s law in the two ways indicated by Moses in our first reading:
by adding to it, or by subtracting from it. Those who subtract from the law are
concerned only with fulfilling their “minimum obligation.” They are always
asking: “Do I have to?” That is a
child’s question, not an adult’s. Even the tone of voice in which it is asked
shows its immaturity.
Catholics who go through life asking,
“Do I have to?” know all their minimum
obligations by heart. They even know (or think they know) how late they can
come to Sunday Mass, and how early they can leave, and still have it
“count.” There is one thing, however,
which these minimum-obligation Catholics do not
know: joy. If your primary concern is finding out how little you need to do for
God and his Church, then you will experience these minimum obligations not as
light, but as heavy burdens. Why is that?
People who concentrate on minimum
obligations are living with God on the fringe of their lives. As long as you
keep God on the fringe of your life, he will always be a threat to you. God
will always be trying to move into the center. Show me a person whose religion
is a source of joy, and I will show you someone whose life is centered on God.
That is how Jesus lived. Like all
Jews, Jesus treasured God’s law: it was at the heart of his personal religion.
Can you imagine Jesus asking, “Do I have to?” or being concerned about fulfilling his
minimum obligation? He did that automatically. Jesus never asked, “How much do
I have to do for God?” He asked
instead, “How much can I do?” Jesus
was like a person in love. No one in love ever asks, when it is a question of
doing something for the beloved, “Do I have
to?” People in love are continually looking for new ways to express their love
through generosity and self-sacrifice.
What about Moses’ other warning: not
to add to God’s law? Who would ever do that, you ask? More people than you
might think. We add to God’s law when we think that by going beyond our minimum
obligation we can gain extra credit – a rising credit balance in some heavenly
bank which God is bound to honor. Extra-credit Catholics forget that, though
God is unbelievably generous, he never owes us anything. It’s the other way
round. We owe him everything. “When
you have done everything you have been commanded to do,” Jesus says (and which
of us has?), “say, ‘We are useless servants. We have done no more than our
duty’” (Lk 17:10). If concentrating on minimum obligations is the failing of
the lax and lazy, thinking we can earn extra credit with God is a failing of
those who are especially devout. It is sobering to realize that the people to
whom Jesus most often speaks severely in the gospels are the especially devout.
“You hypocrites,” Jesus says in the
gospel. He spoke those words not to open and notorious sinners, but to people
who prided themselves on the exact fulfillment of God’s law; who actually went
far beyond what the law required. Their
error lay in supposing that this gave them a claim on God which he was bound to
honor. We never have a claim on God. God has a claim on us, and it is an absolute claim.
God’s love and our salvation are not
things we can earn. They are God’s free
gift. God bestows his gifts on us not because we are good enough, but
because He is so good that he wants
to share his love with us. God’s law is not the list of rules and regulations
that we must first obey before God will love us and bless us. God’s law is, rather, the description of our grateful response to the love and
blessing which God has already bestowed on us out of sheer generosity.
Does this mean that there is no “just
reward” for those who do try to obey God’s law? Of course not. God’s reward for
faithful service is certain. Jesus tells us this in many gospel passages. He
warns us, however, that those who try to calculate their reward in advance will
be disappointed. The people who are most richly rewarded – who are literally
bowled over by God’s generosity – are those who never stop to reckon up their
reward because they are so keenly aware of how far short they still fall of
God’s standard.
If we want to experience God’s
generosity (and is there anyone here who does not?), we must learn to stand
before God with empty hands. Then we shall experience the joy of Mary, who in
her greatest hour, when she learned – astonished, fearful, and confused – that
she was to be the mother of God’s Son, responded with words which the Church
repeats in its public prayer every evening:
“The hungry he has given every good
thing,
while the rich he has sent empty away” (Lk 1:53).
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