In this search for meaning, in desiring to be fully alive, we carry this spontaneity into our faith. To live fully, one should not be so constrained or circumscribed or simply tied down by rules and procedures. Contrast this spontaneity with today’s Gospel. The Jews have 613 laws in the Torah, of which 365 laws consist of prohibition, “Don’t do this”, leaving 248 of them as prescriptions, “Do this”.
Where is the fun?
It is in the context of a highly regulated life that the encounter between Jesus and the scribe took place. It was not an unpleasant exchange between them as often was the case when the path of Jesus crossed that of the scribes and the Pharisees. It was a sincere desire to know if he had been on the right track that occasioned the question of primacy—which commandment was the greatest. Both the first reading and the Gospel make use of the famous Jewish Shema. Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy (Dt 6) commanded the people to love God with their whole mind, their whole heart and their whole strength. Jesus does the same but built into the Shema; He takes a quote from the book of Leviticus (Lev 19) that the love for God should also flow into the love of one’s neighbour. This love of neighbour is the basis for our golden rule, stated positively—you should love your neighbour as yourself and negatively, do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you.
At the heart of the Shema, “Hear, O Israel”, there is practically nothing spontaneous. In fact, the path is distinctly marked out for us because Judaism and Christianity have more or less distilled this wisdom into their religious observances. Practices on which the three pillars of Judaism stand are to pray, to fast and to give alms. These three devout practices enflesh the two commandments in that praying denotes our relationship with God, fasting points to the self, whereas giving alms suggests the social setting within which we move and interact with others.
The Shema, that is, the call to love God is established on the etymology of the word obey which is audire, meaning to listen. Thus, to listen to God is to obey His commandments. But, in a rush to put ourselves out there, as in to invent ourselves, we might have lost the ability to hear. We are preoccupied with making sure that we are heard that we no longer cultivate a listening ear. Our social climate is characterised by shouting and to be heard, you need to shout the loudest. Where is truth in this? How can we hear God above the din of our making?
Listening and obeying are at the heart of who we truly are. Why? Firstly, we were called into being by God—from nothing to someone—creatio ex nihilo. Secondly, no matter how faint that call is, our faculty of listening and our ability to obey are attuned to God and His commandments because only in God, can we be truly alive. Have you ever heard of someone who wants to be half alive? Only someone who is not in the right frame of mind would aspire to be half alive! The challenge we face is the notion that we can be most alive if we ignore God’s commandments; as if following God’s commandments will constraint us.
Sadly, since we live in a politically correct world, we are preoccupied with socially engineering a world without God, in which people can, by merely willing, learn to be “nice” to each other forgetting that being nice is actually based on the commandments of God and is a gift from God. The equality or the justice that social engineers are hoping to achieve is one which disregard God’s prescription for the world. A good example is the attempt to redefine marriage. Today, if one were to hold on to the traditional or religious notion of marriage, one can be “judged” as cruel or hard-hearted etc. Another example is concept of freedom as unrestrictedly individual. If one were to speak out against abortion, one will be labelled as curtailing the freedom to choose.
God’s commandments do not enslave us. Au contraire, they free us to be who we have been created to be. Spontaneity may give the illusion that it is a nobler kind of love that one can at the spur of the moment do something great. But, what does it mean to love? How does one love? We love by not killing. We love by not stealing. We love by putting others’ needs before our own. We love by sacrificing our life so that others may live. All these so called acts of love are marked by them limits and boundaries and are often expressed in a prohibitive manner.
If obeying God’s commandments leads to fullness of life, then we will often fall short simply because the counter proposals always suggest that we are better off without God and that we will be freer if we listen to the world’s values. In short, we are sinners when it comes to obedience. We fall, time and again. Hence, the second reading speaks of the sacrifices which sinners must pay for their failure which we are in a way fortunate or rather blessed because we have a High Priest who is able to take upon Himself the sins of our failure. His sacrifice enables us to tread the path intended by God for us. In Him, we have the grace to live God’s commandments.
Man is fully alive only when he is alive in God. This takes us right into the very commandments that God gives us. The obedience to God requires praying—without it, our relationship with God stands on shaky grounds. This is confirmed by Jesus, when asked about certain evil that cannot be exorcised, he stated that these can only be defeated by prayer and fasting. Prayer is our phone line to God which we will always need. On top of that need for God, we cannot, without self-denial, conquer our sinful nature. Human nature has been weakened by sin—and it will always seek the easier path or the path of least resistance. The conquest of self gives us a better chance of hearing God and obeying His commands and it is in this relationship with God and through the conquest of self that we find ourselves free to love our neighbours the way Christ loves each one of us. It is this freedom that allows for us to be the saints the Church will want to canonise for the world. This is the true freedom of being alive in God.
