3/13/2019 0 Comments Written On Your HeartCan you say the Ten Commandments in order?
If you answered yes, you’re in better shape than my catechists and I are in; if you answered no, well, at least you are in good company. When I was a kid, I thought there were a lot of rules. Rules for home, rules for friends’ houses, rules for restaurants, rules for church, rules for school, rules for the grocery store. Basically everywhere I went there were rules for me to follow and bars for me to meet. I was, for the most part, a well behaved child (a bit spacey because I was lost in my imagination, but polite enough) but I couldn’t wait until I was an adult and could “do whatever I wanted.” Needless to say, the older I got the more rules there seemed to be. Suddenly there were rules about things as mundane as which colors you can wear together and which colors you can wear between May and September. There were rules about how you can express your opinions. There were rules about how to drive your car. Rules to learn for workplaces. Rules to learn for interacting with adults. Rules about how you talk to your friends and acquaintances about religion and life choices. And many of those rules were harder because they were never explicitly stated, they were just something you had to ascertain from context clues. The older I got the more I longed for the simplicity of the rules from childhood. I think it’s easy for the Commandments to feel like this. It’s easy to feel like the ten commandments are just ten more rules that it’s hard to understand the point of. That’s certainly how I felt about them as a teen and when I started Undergrad. When you add in all of the purity laws from the old testament in the Pentateuch I just wonder how any of the rules we’re supposed to follow can be kept straight. And then you get to the New Testament and you read about the Pharisees, who worked really hard at keeping God’s commandments. You read story after story where Jesus tells the Pharisees that they’ve gotten it all wrong; the entirety of Matthew Chapter 28 is Jesus saying they are hypocrites; in Chapter 23 he calls them a brood of vipers; he rebukes them for telling him he can’t heal a man on the Sabbath (Mark 3 or Luke 13). These men dedicated their lives to following the paths of the Lord, to learning His ways but Jesus says they have it all wrong and they don’t understand the heart of God. Fortunately for us, we are told that the laws are not written on stone, but rather on our hearts because we were given the gift of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul says it this way in Hebrews 10:15-17: The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says: “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.” Then he adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” What a beautiful promise this is for us. What an amazing gift for us. Unlike the Jewish people of Jesus’ time, we have the gift of the Holy Spirit moving in our hearts, guiding us and helping us to make the right decisions. What a gift, that God's laws unlike those of men, give freedom to live in joy and peace. This week, I invite you to spend extra time in prayer with the Lord, asking the Holy Spirit to give you a heart willing to receive His wisdom. Peace, Michaela
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