OBEDIENCE TO THE LAW

A REFLECTION FOR THE 5TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

We are all aware that there are Ten Commandments.  We learned them by heart for our First Communion, and unfortunately we’ve been breaking them ever since.  There’s a saying that rules are meant to be broken, and that is correct only in a certain sense.  The fact is that God understands our human nature because he created it.  He knows us inside and out, even our fallen human nature to which the sin of Adam reduced it.  The tendency of this nature is to do whatever it wants, and this inclination to sin would be our ruin.  And so for this reason, God gave us the Law.  The Ten Commandments.  Rules which he knew we would break because our human nature leads us to break them and merit eternal punishment for doing so. But God doesn’t want us to be punished eternally, and so he gave us the gift of the Commandments to remind us at least to fight our natural inclinations.   The Law is there to keep us out of trouble.

For this reason, our old enemy Satan hates the Law.  He hates it because it succeeds in preventing us from doing whatever we want and joining him in hell.  His attack on the Law has been constant throughout history, and at certain times, like the French Revolution and today’s mob activity, he seems to succeed for a time.  Without the law, by definition we have chaos, lawlessness—anarchy, and this is exactly what he wants.  He encourages us to want it too.  After all, the devil’s most attractive feature is in taking the side of our own fallen nature, encouraging the lowest desires and most sordid emotions that stir within us.  He seeks to turn these things into something not only desirable but attainable, and he holds them in front of us like bait, hoping we’ll do what Eve did and take a bite.

God, on the other hand, seeks to protect his children from the inevitable fate that would be ours if we do not control these appetites.  He sets our moral compass towards the goal of heaven, by listing our lower instincts and placing the words “Thou shalt not” in front of them.  He didn’t just make up rules for the sake of showing us who’s the boss.  The Ten Commandments are our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil, against the world and its allurements, and most of all, against ourselves.

God has entrusted his deputies to promulgate and enforce his laws.  These deputies are our civil governments, our Caesars, whoever they may be.  Whether Kings or Congress, Emperors or State Governors, they have the civil responsibility for giving us laws that prevent us from harming the common good.  So long as the laws they give us conform to the Ten Commandments, to the Law of God and to the Laws of the Nature which God created, we must obey them, for the authority of these laws ultimately comes from God.  Only when our governments go against these laws are we permitted to disobey them.  If Caesar ever tells us we must sacrifice to his pagan gods, we must disobey even if it means death.  We may not give unto Caesar what is not Caesar’s.  But we are morally obliged to keep those laws if they are God’s laws.  Chaos is not an option for the Catholic.