LAW AND RIGHT ORDER
We read the Bread of Life Discourse from John 6 over the past 5 Sundays, where we were invited to ask ourselves Who Jesus is to us, and to reflect on Peter’s response “Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life.”[i] Today we look at how to respond to the “Holy One of God”. In our daily living, we face many laws that govern us; the natural law written in our hearts, church, civil and societal laws. Sometimes, it may feel as if these laws are oppressive, that they seek to restrict our freedom. How then should we respond to authority?
Obedience to authority can be challenging to our ego. We need to remember that all authority comes from God, and that his law is meant to give us life[ii] and not to oppress us. If we recognise that God is Truth, Beauty and Goodness[iii], and that Jesus came to show us that God’s truth, beauty, and goodness is ordered to his commandment to love God first, and equally to love our neighbour as ourselves[iv], then we can begin to “accept and submit to this word which has been planted in (us) and can save (our) souls”[v] as we hear in our 2nd Reading from James.” God does not demand from us a blind obedience to his law, but that we may meditate on his word and use our human intellect to understand the reasons behind the law. Our faith is relational - our relationship with the Lawgiver becomes our measure of how much we respond to His law of love. When we have a right understanding, it becomes easier for us to die to ourselves and become more like Christ, to reflect Christ to everyone we meet at home, at our workplaces and schools, and in the world.
Properly understood, we can then truly be free to “live in the presence of the Lord”[vi], as we hear in our psalm response today. We are called to meditate on the attributes of one who “dwells on God’s holy mountain”. It is a very high ideal for us in our human condition and appears to be impossible. But we are Christians, called to shine as a light within the world. We often hear that “life is a marathon, not a race”, which means that we will sometimes have seasons where life is smooth sailing and effortless, sometimes other season of life where we struggle so hard and life appears uphill and challenging, and most of the time where life may appear to just be level and seemingly monotonous. In all this time though, we need to remember that God is teaching and nurturing us as we follow the law. We can observe in the parents around us how they gently guide their children in their growing and formative years but often find the need to constantly remind their children because they sometimes forget. In our human experience, sometimes we wander off the beaten track and forget ourselves. It is in these times that we run into the boundaries of the law and may feel a certain sense of restraint, that our freedom is curtailed. At these times, it is good to pause, and to reflect on whether the action we are planning to undertake is an act that loves God, Self, and our Neighbour. If it does not love all three, then we might want to rethink and perhaps choose differently.
Our Gospel today brings to mind a possible result of blind obedience to laws out of habit and invites us to reflect on our attitude and disposition in obedience to God’s law. There are many laws we find ourselves following, but if we do so blindly without affective love of God, then it becomes mere “lip service”, “worthless”, and “only human regulations”[vii], which is “hypocrite” behaviour! Wow, these are certainly very strong accusations. We are invited to look inside and deeply examine our intentions, for our very intentions determine whether a man is “clean or unclean”. It is not easy to live this Law of Love! Thankfully we have in the Church many Saints that have shown us that it is possible to grow in love and charity amid the world we live in. St Thérèse of Lisieux wrote, “I understand so very well that it is only through love that we can render ourselves pleasing to the good Lord, that love is the one thing I long for. The science of love is the only science I desire.”[viii]. In her life, she did not force herself to be loving to her community around her, but by growing in awareness of the times she was tempted to be unloving or overly attached to her own emotions. Her “Little Way” was tested by her choosing to love a very difficult sister in her monastery, simply because she recognised that this sister was God’s creation and her belief deep down in her heart that God made all things good! Sister Teresa of St Augustine later testified in two canonization testimonies that she was Thérèse’s favourite. She never knew that in fact St. Thérèse found her insufferable and had been exercising her virtue by being especially kind to her.
Let us then spend some time in reflecting on how we respond to God’s law. Do we view it oppressive and controlling? Do we see a Father’s love that wants his children to flourish and grow? More importantly, do we realise our Christian duty to be lights to the world, witnesses to everyone who we encounter of the “message of Eternal Life” that we have heard for ourselves? I leave you with this favourite hymn, written by Sister Irene O'Connor FMM while she was working as a teacher in Singapore in the 1960s.
https://youtu.be/mKjRsmQzq5U?si=YvvMf_ihajNNQo7w
Article by Daniel Tham, HFC Blog Contributor
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[i] John 6:68-69
[ii] Deuteronomy 4:1
[iii] CCC 319
[iv] Mark 12: 30-31
[v] James 1:21
[vi] Psalm 14(15)
[vii] Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23
[viii] John Clarke, trans., Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux (ICS Publications: 1996), 187-188.