Life is full of choices. We make a multitude of choices every day. Some might be small and insignificant. Others might be huge, life changing decisions. No matter how big or small, choices challenge us. The challenge is to make the right choice. In today’s first reading, Sirach 15:15-20, the author gives us a lesson about free will and making wise decisions. He admonishes us not to blame others for our bad choices, “Say not: ‘It was God’s doing that I fell away’…. Say not, ‘it was he who set me astray’” (Sir 15:11-12). God made us subject to our own “free choice.” Since the time of Adam and Eve people have been responsible for their own decisions. However, we are accountable to God for all our decisions.
Of course, we do not have to make our decisions in a vacuum. We have tools to help us. God gave us the Ten Commandments to guide us in our relationship with God and with the people around us. We have laws: international laws, national laws, state laws, and local laws. Also, we have social and cultural mores to help keep us in line. The people of Israel during the time of Jesus had the Ten Commandments; Mosaic Law; Scriptural Law (the Law of the Prophets); Scribal Law and Roman Law. They had legal professionals, Scribes who worked out the rules and regulations based on their reading of scripture and Pharisees who separated themselves from ordinary life just so they could observe all the rules and regulations cooked up by the Scribes. Scribal Law was so onerous that it defined the simplest acts of living. For example, Scribal Law determined what people could eat, how it was cooked, and how it was to be eaten. Scribal Law determined what clothing people wore and how they “did” their hair. Jesus had major issues with the practice of Scribal Law because it focused on the mundane and trivial and not on the guiding principles that were the foundation of the law (the spirit of the law).
In Matthew 22:36-40 Jesus defined the Spirit of the Law when asked by a Pharisee, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” St. Augustine summed it up this way in one of his homilies, “Love, and do what thou wilt…. Let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.”
If all our decisions and choices were made in the context of considering our love of God and our love of neighbor imagine what a different place our world would be. It would reflect the Kingdom of Heaven. Our challenge this week is to try it. Try asking yourself, does this choice or decision reflect my love of God and my love of neighbor? If the answer is yes then welcome to the Kingdom. If the answer is no, you might want to reconsider what you are doing.
Lord God, loving Father,
in your Son Jesus you have shown us
how we should seek and fulfil your loving will.
Dispose us to respond to your love
from the depth of our heart
and to be faithful to you in all we do.
Help us be respectful of one another
and attentive to the needs of people,
even when they remain indifferent and thankless,
that we may help to ban evil from this world
and bring to it your love and mercy.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
