Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent (March 7, 2018): The journey of holiness

How often have you heard: “It’s okay if I do this or that, even though I’m not supposed to. God understands. He loves me anyway.” For example: “It’s okay if I swear. It’s only words. God understands that I’ve had a really bad day.” Or “It’s okay if I had an abortion. I don’t believe it was a real person yet. And God understands my reasons.” Or “It’s okay for gay couples to marry, because they love each other, and God is love.”

In today’s first reading, Moses emphasized how important it is to observe (obey) the decrees of God. He said: “Observe them carefully….” Well, what if someone wants to claim ignorance as an alibi? For example: “I don’t see how abortion can be breaking God’s commandment of ‘Do not kill,’ because the fetus is not a real person yet.”

God has made his commands known to us. He speaks to us in the scriptures and, in the Catholic tradition of Christianity, through the teachings of the Church Magisterium, which are carefully based on the scriptures to explain how to apply the scriptures to modern situations.

So why does knowing God’s will sometimes get muddy and messy? Because we convince ourselves that a sin isn’t really a sin. Saying that a fetus isn’t a person doesn’t make it a blob of meaningless tissue; we don’t have that kind of power. Saying that God understands doesn’t make him approve of what we do; we don’t have that kind of control. Saying that love between partners of the same gender justifies sexual activity doesn’t make God change his plans for marriage; we don’t have that kind of authority.

The word “obedience” comes from the Latin for “listening. When we disagree with a teaching of the Church, Jesus is directing us to study it. Listen for his Holy Spirit to explain the truth of it. The bottom line of every truth is love. When we listen and finally hear any difficult teaching in the context of love, obedience becomes easy.

Jesus warns us in today’s Gospel passage that “whoever breaks the least significant of these commands and teaches others to do so shall be called least in the kingdom of God.” Although we’ve been saved from hell because we know that Jesus has redeemed us through the cross, we are not saved from eternal repercussions if we cling to disobedience through excuses and rationalizations. (See my note below.)

Which sin is worse: swearing or committing abortion? It doesn’t matter. Jesus says, “Whoever breaks the least significant of these commands and teaches others to do so….” What are we teaching by our examples? We never sin alone. How terrible to enable others to sin by being lazy about our own journey of holiness!

Here’s a morning prayer for submitting ourselves to God’s holy will:

Lord, here I am today.
Imperfect. Tempted to sin.
Not loving You as I desire, not loving others as I should.
Take me as I am. You do love me as I am!
You are so good to me! Help me to love myself, too.
Take what is good — the gifts You have given to me —
and use it for Your kingdom.
Take what is imperfect and transform it into a blessing.
Take what is sinful and teach me to grow in holiness.
Lord, here I am today.
Help me to do Your will.

Note: One day while at Mass, where I am most aware of Jesus, I felt led to pray for someone I know who had an abortion. After receiving Jesus in the Eucharist, a visual story of this person’s potential afterlife unfolded in my imagination. I believe it was divinely inspired. It is posted on GNM’s website as a Modern Day Parable, with identities changed to protect the person for whom I had prayed. Please visit wordbytes.gnm.org/parables-purgatory/