“Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.”1 Only someone with ears to hear can credibly make this statement. In our first reading, we hear about God revealing the Ten Commandments, to Moses.
Rather than a list of dos and don'ts, the Ten Commandments can easily be seen simply as a list of don'ts. Based on a certain, tone deaf, reading this can result in constructing a religion of “Don't!”
As Irish Catholic writer John Waters, reflecting on the highly Jansenistic version of Catholicism that was all too common in Ireland and in which he was raised, once observed- the question the Church has to answer is “What comes after don't?"2 In other words, “Don't” is not enough, not by a long shot!
Jesus’ teaching is about what comes after don't. What comes after no is agape, that is, self-giving, self-sacrificing love. This why his so-called Two Great Commandments are positive: love God with your entire being and love your neighbor as you love yourself.3 It’s more accurate, then, to say that love comes both before and after don't.
One of the ways “the Evil One comes and steals away what was sown in [someone’s] heart” is by convincing that person that Christianity is just a big “Don't!” and that God is a cosmic killjoy, who stands opposed to enjoyment, happiness, excitement.4 It is a short leap from there to understanding being a Christian as one who strictly follows a prescribed set of rules.
On this view, the more rules you follow the better Christian you are. As most of us know, this is a shortcut to hypocrisy. Perhaps nothing is more off-putting than hypocrisy. This pseudo-Christianity is anti-evangelization. It’s not good news. It’s just old news.
What was fundamentally wrong with the Pharisees’ approach to the Law is that they mistook means for ends. According to the Gospels, love seems to have played little or no role in their understanding of the Law. In other words, they seem not to have had ears to hear.
One way to put this is that you obey the commandments out of love for God as a way to love your neighbor. Looking at the Ten Commandments, we can schematize them in the following way: the first three are about loving God; the last six are about loving your neighbor.
What about the fourth commandment? It is about honoring your parents. It’s true, your parents occupy a unique place between God and other people. I can’t think of a better way to end than by invoking today’s Gospel acclamation:
Blessed are they who have kept the word with a generous heart
and yield a harvest through perseverance5
1 Responsorial, see Readings link above.↩
2 Final chapter of John Water's book Lapsed Agnostic, entitled "After Don't".↩
3 Matthew 22:36-40.↩
4 Matthew 13:19.↩
5 See Readings link above and Luke 8:15.↩
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