Saturday, March 30, 2024

Easter Sunday. The choice for God

 





 The greatest desire that everyone has, is to find happiness/fulfillment and to be with the ones we love again. This is what Easter is all about.

 

We believe that God created everything we know: the visible universe and the invisible world of the spirit that we cannot see yet, which was created before the material world. We will see it when we die. Some people get glimpses of it in this life.

 

We also believe that God’s greatest creation was the human being, because we were made in the image of God, with the gift of free will, the ability to love and the ability to suffer. God created us because He wanted us to share in his happiness. When you have a time of celebration, such as a wedding, the birth of a child, a graduation, or something like that, our natural instinct is to reach out to others that they may share our happiness. It is the same reason why God created us, to share in his happiness. When God originally created us, He gave our first parents that happiness, which is explained through the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of paradise. It says that they had everything they could ask for.

 

God gave them one restriction: they were not to eat of the tree of good and evil. In other words, they must not play God, deciding what is right and wrong, good and evil. Only God is to determine that. They needed to recognize their limitations as human beings. But Satan deceived them and talked them into playing God and going against what God told them. He said, ‘If you eat of the tree of good and evil, you will be like God. You can play God, deciding what is good and evil.’ And they gave into that temptation and stepped across that boundary that God had forbidden them to cross. The reason why God had commanded them not to do this, was because they were not able to play God. It was too much for them. God had told them this for their own good. He showed them their limitations as human beings. If they tried to go beyond their limitations, it would only bring suffering.

 




Why would Satan, who is a being far more powerful than any of us, want to deceive us? Because he hates God and what God created, especially the human being. So, to get at God, he tries to destroy what is precious to God, that is, us. Satan has no interest in us and in fact despises us.

 

The problem with that sin of our first parents, was that there was no way that they could undo the damage. They could not reverse it. They had opened the door to sin and suffering in our world. It says that after the Fall, sin began to happen, beginning with the murder of Abel, by Cain. And then it spread and spread, because our first parents did not listen to God and respect what God had told them.

 

However, because God loves his creation, He would not let it remain in that way. And so, God the Son, took on human nature in the person of Jesus and atoned for that sin. His sacrifice atoned for that sin and undid the damage, thereby reopening the possibility of happiness once more. But because God respects our free will, He doesn’t force that on us. Rather, God offers it to us: ‘I have done this for you and this happiness awaits you if you want it, but you must choose it.’ It is a free choice and a very real choice and we must make that choice.

 

Baptism is the most important way of making that choice. When we are baptized we are saying, ‘Yes, I believe this, I accept what God has done for me and is offering me. Let me have it all. Let me be soaked in it, baptized in it.’ But this is a choice that all of us have to make. That’s why as part of baptism the person is asked, ‘Do you reject Satan and do you believe in God the Father almighty creator of heaven and earth,’ etc.

 




Then you might ask, ‘Why baptize an infant, since an infant doesn’t know what is happening?’ We baptize an infant, because we want the grace of baptism, the possibility of heaven for them, from the beginning of their life. But an infant is baptized on condition that the parents promise to teach them the faith as they grow up. Otherwise it is hypocrisy. So if you have had your child baptized, remember that you made a promise to God to teach that child all about God and God will hold you accountable for that promise.

 

Easter is all about the choice of baptism, because the death and resurrection of Jesus was what reopened the possibility of heaven for us and we must accept that or not, but it is a real choice. God will not force anything on us, because He has given us free will. We must choose.

 

If we look around at our world, we can see what happens when we try and play God. There is chaos. We are not able for it. Today we are deciding what is good and evil, who lives and who dies. If we listen to God, then we do not do that, because we know that only God can do that. When we live by what God teaches us, commands us, then our life works, our society flourishes in the right way. When we ignore those Commandments, we end up with chaos, which is what we are seeing right now.

 

So it keeps going back to what Easter celebrates, not just the death and resurrection of Jesus, but also the choice to accept that or not. To accept it, is to recognize what God is offering us, the possibility of happiness and being with the ones we love once more. Jesus continually spoke about this choice in all that He taught. It is a real choice and all of us are free to make it. We either accept or reject God. We must take it seriously, because God takes us seriously and when we die, we will be given what we have chosen: life with God, which is what we call heaven, or without God, which is what we call hell.

 

Look, I am coming soon. My reward is with me and I will give to each person according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.’ (Rev 22:12)

 


Friday, March 22, 2024

Palm Sunday. On the need to forgive

 


 

One of the things that seems to cause the most division that people so often tell me about in confession, is bitterness in families over things like wills, where land or money has been left to someone and others in the family feel hard done by; sometimes over children who won’t forgive parents for their mistakes, or parents who won’t forgive their children, but especially over wills. It is very sad, but it is amazing how much of it exists. We decide that we can’t forgive, or won’t forgive, because we have been hurt too deeply. Unforgiveness is probably the single biggest obstacle to God’s helping us in this life. If I refuse to forgive someone, I am preventing the Lord from helping me, because this is one thing that the Lord asks us to do. 

 

No doubt all of us here expect to be forgiven by God when we die. That’s what our faith teaches us, but I wonder do all of us feel that we also have to forgive those who have wronged us. This is exactly what the Lord tells us we must do, if we hope to be forgiven ourselves. We say it every time we pray the Our Father: ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Jesus used many parables to emphasize this. The landlord who forgave one of his debtors a large debt which he was unable to pay, when he asked for mercy. But then that same man went out and refused to forgive one of his debtors for a much smaller amount. The first landlord condemned him for his lack of mercy and threw him in jail. And Jesus finishes with the words, ‘And that is how my heavenly Father will treat you, unless you forgive your brother from your heart’ (Matthew 18:35).

 

There is also a common misunderstanding about forgiveness, and it is this: many people have the idea that in order to forgive someone who has hurt me, I must feel like forgiving them. In other words I must have got to the stage where I no longer feel the hurt, and so therefore I can forgive. That is not how it works. If most of us were to wait until we actually felt like forgiving someone who has hurt us, we would probably never forgive? This is where people get stuck: forgiveness is not based on how you feel, but is a decision of our will. I decide to forgive someone, because the Lord asks me to and by doing that I then open the door to allow the Lord to begin to help me get over the hurt. Or to put it the other way around: if I refuse to forgive someone, I am preventing God from helping me to be healed of the hurt. I will not begin to heal as long as the unforgiveness remains.

 



Lord I forgive John, please bless him and help me to heal.’ When we decide to forgive, we are not saying that what happened no longer matters, or that it wasn’t wrong, or that we no longer feel the pain. We are choosing to forgive the person, so that we can heal. We are letting go of the resentment. We may have to say those words many more times throughout our life, but as long as we do, then we will begin to heal. If I refuse to forgive someone, I become consumed with the hurt, the resentment and anger. It eats away at me like a cancer. I am the one who suffers. You may feel that by refusing to forgive, you are punishing the other person. The truth is they may not even be aware of the hurt they have caused. You are the one who is suffering and the key to healing is in your hands.

 

The deeper the hurt, the harder it is to forgive and the Lord knows that. That is why Jesus spoke about it so many times. When the Apostles asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, He gave them the Our Father. The Our Father is a way of praying, not just a prayer and two whole lines of it are to do with forgiveness. ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.’ If we expect to be forgiven, we too must forgive.

 

It is a terrible thing to meet someone in the later years of their life who has refused to forgive. You can see it in their face. They are angry and bitter and they are not at peace. That is not what the Lord wants for any of us and so He shows us the way out. The key is in our own hands.

 

When you find yourself angry with someone, it usually means you need to forgive them. I doubt if there is anyone who doesn’t need to forgive someone and so many of the stories people tell me are about serious injustices. The bigger the wrong we have experienced the harder it is to forgive. But remind yourself, it is not about how you feel. It is a decision.

 




St. Maria Goretti died just before her 12th birthday, in 1902. She was stabbed to death by a man called Alessandro Serenelli, who tried to rape her. She wouldn’t give in to him and in a rage he repeatedly stabbed her. Some years after he was imprisoned for her murder, she appeared to him in a dream and gave him 15 lilies. He realized that each one represented each of the times that he had stabbed her and that she had forgiven him. From then on, he became deeply repentant, so much so that he was eventually let out of jail early (after 27 years) because of his exemplary behaviour. After he was released he went to her mother to beg her forgiveness. His mother said to him, ‘If Maria can forgive you, then I must forgive you too.’ I can’t imagine the grief and anger that her mother must have gone through, but she forgave Alessandro and I have no doubt that will have brought her peace and set her free.

 

When you are dying, will the injustices carried out against you still matter? Will you still refuse to forgive? We will not get into heaven until we forgive those who have wronged us and that is why it is so important. The key to healing is in our own hands, but it is a decision, not a feeling.

 

Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.’

 


Sunday, March 17, 2024

5th Sunday of Lent Year B (Gospel: John 12:20-33) Unless a wheat grain falls to the ground and dies it remains just a single grain




 

Unless a wheat grain falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a single grain. But if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.’

 

A survey was done in America a few years ago to see who were the happiest people and why. The survey found that the happiest people were old African-American women. The second happiest people were old Hispanic women. The third happiest group of people were old women in general. Why? Because they had suffered so much throughout their lives. They had grown so much through what they had suffered and now they were generally quite content and very little would put them out. And I notice the same thing with many of the older people in my work. Most of them are quite happy and patient, much more patient that young people. 

 

We always wonder when we see people suffering, why they have to suffer so much, especially at the end of their life. We feel they have had enough suffering and they should be able to relax a bit now. Today, euthanasia is presented to us as a way to avoid suffering, but that goes against what God teaches us. Only God can give and take life. Also, the suffering that people go through can be transformative. Sometimes you can see how it changes people and families. If we deliberately cut that out through euthanasia, we may be depriving someone of a really important step in their journey, only we can’t see it.

 

If you think of times of suffering that you have been through and people go through the most horrendous ordeals. But when you look back, you can often see that it helped us to grow, mature, become wiser, more compassionate, even though we would rather not go through it.

 

We look at death as the end of the life we know and to us this life is everything, because it is the only thing we know. When we are dying we are coming to the end of all that we see as good and worthwhile. But if you imagine what it would be like if we could step over that threshold into the next life and look back. Then we wouldn’t see death as the end of everything, rather as the final and most important step of the journey to heaven. Then we would probably realize how important it is to be ready for that very important step. We would realize that this life is only a preparation for the next life. You could call it a training ground, to learn the ways of God and to choose to love him and follow in his steps, or not.

 




If the next life is forever, then the preparation that we make for it in this life is extremely important. God knows this better than we do, so He helps us to learn in the most effective way possible, which is often through suffering. It’s not that God makes us suffer. Suffering is part of this life, but God uses it to help us to learn what is really important. And you can see in the hospitals, the effect that suffering often has on people. People who sometimes come in arrogant and full of themselves, are soon humbled and realize that they are no better than anyone else, and that they too have to wait their turn.

 

I remember visiting a man who had just been admitted to hospital. He was there with his wife. His wife told me that he was a movie producer and obviously wanted me to realize how important he was. She kept emphasizing how important he was. A few days later he was still there, but was just like all the other patients, having to wait his turn. His earthly importance didn’t make him any more special when it came to his mortality.

 

It says in the second reading, ‘Although he was Son, Christ learnt to obey through suffering’ and that ‘He was made perfect through suffering.’ Christ didn’t want to suffer any more than we do, but he trusted in the Father’s will. If you think of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He begged the Father if there was any way that he could avoid going through what was facing him. ‘Father if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless not my will, but yours’ (Mt 26:39). We don’t want to suffer either, but we must also learn to trust that God knows what He is doing. One of the hardest parts of suffering is that we can’t see any point to it, or any good outcome from it. If we knew that it would have a good outcome, that would help us endure, but we can’t see anything.

 

The society that we live in tells us continually that we should have everything as we want it and that we shouldn’t have to suffer. Everything is for our pleasure and our fulfillment, but that’s not what Jesus taught us. He said, ‘Try to enter by the narrow door’ (Lk 13.24). And he said, ‘Anyone who loves his life loses it’. In other words, if you want to follow the ways of God, which lead to heaven, then it will require change, humility and God will teach you how to grow in your spirit, so that when we die, we will be more ready to meet him. That means we won’t always be able to have everything as we want it. We are called to sacrifice, rather than seek self-fulfillment. This generally happens through the ongoing challenges that we face through our life. You who have children know how much sacrifice is involved in raising a family and in being married and in religious life and in any way of life where we try to follow the Lord.

 

It is no wonder Satan offers us so much pleasure and temptation, because he doesn’t want us to get to heaven and this world is the only one in which he can destroy us, by trying to make us choose against God. Jesus called him ‘The prince of this world, a liar and deceiver,’ because he tempts us through this world. He tells us, ‘God doesn’t love you. See how He makes you suffer. God is unjust. If God were really good, He would make your life happy.’ We are in the middle of a spiritual battle and that’s why we need to arm ourselves with the spiritual strength that God gives us.

 




St. Paul writes, ‘Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places’ (Ephesians 6:12). How did he know this? Because God revealed it to him. But if we live as though none of this is real, as so many people do, then we leave ourselves wide open to the workings of Satan and his minions, who are constantly trying to lead us away from God, with worldly temptations and what seems to be the easier way.  

 

How do we fight the dark spiritual powers? Through prayer, reading God’s word, receiving the Eucharist at mass, going to confession and living as the Lord shows us how to live. The Scriptures keep reminding us of what is true and acceptable to God. They are usually the opposite of worldly values and this is why we need to keep hearing them, so that we are not deceived.

 

So I must ask myself, do I want to live what God shows me? It is the narrow winding path, but it is also the path that leads to God. If we allow him to, God will transform us through all that we go through here on earth, the good and bad.

Unless a wheat grain falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it produces much fruit.’

 



Saturday, March 9, 2024

4th Sunday of Lent Yr B (Gospel: John 3:14-21) Forgiveness and repentance

 


 

Every time I celebrate the mass there is one line more than any other that seems to stay in my mind. It is the last line of the prayer the priest says over the chalice at the consecration: ‘This is the chalice of my blood. It will be shed for you and for many so that sins may be forgiven.’ That phrase, ‘so that sins may be forgiven,’ is really what the whole mass is about, and indeed what the whole of Jesus life was about: ‘So that sins may be forgiven.’

 

Jesus came among us so that our sins could be taken away, so that we could be healed. That fact alone should give us great courage, because it means that God is totally for us, even when we have fallen into sin. The Lord is not interested in our sin, He is interested in us. He wants us to be healed, to be at peace, to be happy and to reach our full potential. ‘I want you to be happy, always happy in the Lord’ (Phil 4:4). And that is also why He challenges us to repent and to keep coming back to God, no matter what happens, because God knows much better than we do that sin is the one thing that can block us from God and God is ultimately our happiness. If we lose God we will also lose our happiness, because nothing else can fulfil us.

 

There is a great story in the Old Testament about King David. It would make a great movie. David—who is now a very powerful king with everything he could ask for—is walking one day on the roof of his house and he sees a beautiful woman in a nearby garden taking a bath. He asks who she is and he is told that she is Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. She is married. Because he is king and used to getting his own way, he has her brought to him and he sleeps with her. Some time later she sends a message to him to tell him that she is pregnant. Now he is afraid, because he knows he is going to be found out. So he sends for her husband Uriah, who is away in battle, fighting for him. When Uriah comes, David asks him how the war is going, how the morale is among the men, etc. Later he invites him to dine with him and then he sends him away and says, ‘Go home to your wife and tomorrow I’ll let you return to the battle.’ But Uriah doesn’t go to his house. Perhaps he is suspicious. Instead he sleeps at the door of the palace with the servants. 

 

The next day when David finds out that he didn’t go home to his wife, he invites him again to come and eat with him. This time he gets Uriah drunk and then tells him to go home to his wife, but again Uriah sleeps at the gate of the palace. Now David is getting desperate, so the following day, David sends Uriah back to the battle with a letter to his senior officer telling him to place Uriah in the thick of the battle and then to pull back so that he is killed. So Uriah goes back to the war carrying his own death warrant and he is killed.

 




So we have lust, adultery, lies, betrayal and murder, all committed by the so-called ‘great’ King David. But because God loves David, He doesn’t let him away with it and so he sends the prophet Nathan to David, who tells him the following story.

 

Nathan says to David, ‘There was once a rich man who lived in a city. He had all he wanted: huge farms, many servants etc. There was also a poor man in the same city who had just one little lamb. And he loved the lamb like one of his own children. One day a stranger came to the rich man, but instead of taking one of his own flock for the meal, the rich man took the poor man’s lamb and had it killed instead.’  When David heard this he jumped up in a rage and said, ‘As the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die.’ And Nathan says to David: ‘You are the man.’

 

Now David is considered one of the greatest kings of ancient Israel and the reason is because of what he does next. When David hears the Prophet Nathan’s accusation he says, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’ David was powerful enough to be able to do anything he wanted, but when God challenges him, he is also big enough to confess that he has done wrong and he repents of the sin.

 

It is because God loves us that He challenges us to acknowledge our wrongdoing and repent of it, so that we can remain close to him. The Lord doesn’t want our downfall. On the contrary, the Lord wants us to be able to be at peace, which is why He offers us the extraordinary gift of his mercy and forgiveness through confession and we can have this gift as often as we ask for it, but we must ask for it. Sadly, many have come to see confession as a burden, or as something inflicted on us, a duty, an obligation; but this is to see it completely backwards. Confession is a gift of healing that God has given us, so that we can be free and live in peace, because that is what God wants for us. God challenges us to confess, so that we can be healed. It is for our benefit.

 



The greatest healing ministry of the Church is the forgiveness of sins. ‘You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church... Whoever’s sins you forgive they are forgiven; whoever’s sins you retain, they are retained’ (Mat 16:18ff.). And in St. John’s Gospel after the resurrection Jesus appears to the Apostles and says, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Those whose sins you forgive are forgiven. Those whose sins you retain are retained.’ (Jn 20:22). And now the Lord continues to offer us that forgiveness through the priesthood, which is a wonderful thing because it is a very concrete way of knowing, through another human being, that our sins are completely forgiven. We need that concreteness and God knows that.

 

As we watch the chaos of our own society around us and the evil that seems to continue to grow, the best way we can begin to bring about change is by repenting ourselves. We ask God’s forgiveness for our own sins. That is the way to get ready for the coming of Jesus.  There is no point in pointing out the sins of others if I am not willing to begin by acknowledging and confessing my own sins. That is the way to begin to improve life in our families, our workplaces and our world. We must begin with ourselves.

 

Why do I have to confess to a priest?

God in his wisdom, knows exactly what helps us most and He knows that we need to be held accountable. And so He gave us the priesthood, so that we can make ourselves accountable to one of his ministers and that also takes humility on our part. Who wants to acknowledge to another person that they have sinned? No one, because there is a certain humility needed. But God also knows that that is the only way we should come before him, in humility, acknowledging our own sinfulness. There is no other way we should come before God. And if you find yourself saying, ‘I don’t need to confess to a priest, I can tell God I am sorry myself,’ then you are telling God that you don’t need the gift that He gave us through the priesthood. ‘I don’t need your gift. I can do it my own way.’

 

In Matthew chapter 9, we have the account of a paralysed man being brought to Jesus on a stretcher, in the hope that Jesus would heal him. Jesus begins by saying, ‘My child, your sins are forgiven.’ And the Pharisees say, ‘Who is this man to say he can forgive sins?’ And I’m sure the onlookers could care less about the forgiveness of the man’s sins. They were hoping for his healing. But then Jesus goes on to say, ‘“But to show you that the Son of man has the power to forgive sins,” He said to the paralytic, “Get up. Take up your mat and go home.”’ And the man was healed.

 

Why did Jesus start by saying, “Your sins are forgiven”? because He is showing us that there is a direct connection between our begin healed and the forgiveness of our sins. We tend to focus only on the physical, but we are body and spirit. The two are intimately linked. What happens to one affects the other.

 

 


 

Receiving God’s grace through confession, heals us. One of the privileges of being a priest is to hear confession and to see the change that takes place in people when they confess, especially when they confess serious sins they have been carrying for a long time. You can see the change in their face. A burden is lifted from them. They become more at peace. That doesn’t happen when you tell God you are sorry by yourself. That happens when you confess to a priest and I know because I see it constantly and it is a beautiful thing to see.

 

So often I hear someone confessing a serious sin from their past, which they have been too ashamed to confess up to that point. When they confess it, they often cry and you can see the burden that has been lifted from them. That is the grace of confession, the healing that comes from confession. I’m sure they told God they were sorry for that sin hundreds of times, but it is not the same. They weren’t healed when they did, because they didn’t do it the way God asks us to. God wants to heal us, but we need to listen to what God tells us to do. In the letter of St. James (5:16) he says, ‘Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.’

 

You often hear me talk about apparitions, because they are important and heaven speaks to us through them. One of the things that is always said by Our Lady, is that we need to confess our sins to a priest; not by ourselves, but to a priest, because this is what brings healing and because this is what God asks us to do.

 

We have a psychological need to tell someone about our sins. When you listen to these chat shows on TV or the radio, when people tell the whole world about their infidelities, that is confession. Confessing our sins is part of what sets us free. When we confess to a priest in confession we also receive God’s grace, which you could call divine strength, because God wants to heal us. It is his gift to us. So if you can do one important thing this Lent, go to confession and don’t let the devil tell you that you don’t need to. Satan does not want you to confess, because he knows how powerful it is.

 

This is the chalice of my blood…It will be poured out for you and for many, so that sins may be forgiven.’

 

 


Sunday, March 3, 2024

3rd Sunday of Lent, Year B (John 2:13-25) The commandments are our freedom

 




I grew up in a large family, with three brothers and three sisters. It was a strict enough family and of course most of the time I resented the various rules we were given. I wanted to have things my way, but I wasn’t allowed to have them my way all the time, or there would have been chaos. Now that I am older, I can see the wisdom of a lot of the rules that we were given, but at the time they often seemed unfair, or annoying at the very least. What we were taught served its purpose and helped to form us as children. It helped us to learn that there are basic guidelines that we all must adhere to if a family is to work.

 

A few years ago a friend of mine was at a business conference in Dublin and one of the speakers was saying that as a society we have forgotten some of the basic principles of living, such as honesty and integrity, respect for the human being. He was saying it was largely because of that neglect that we ended up in the last financial crisis we found ourselves in. Honesty and respect for the human being should be the norm and not the exception. If these are the principles out of which we operate, our society will be a lot healthier. 

 

A young man asked me was it wrong to lie? He was an intelligent man too. One of the commandments tells us ‘You must not bear false witness’, that also means, ‘You must not lie.’ That gives you an idea of the kind of confusion that is around us.

 

I know that in the past many people have had bad experiences of an over-demanding Church, which for a while seemed to focus too much on sin and everything that was wrong. I heard an old priest in Ireland joking that in the Church in Ireland of the 1950s, almost everything was a mortal sin and everything else was forbidden! That is not healthy. God wants us to be alive and to enjoy our life on earth. If religion just becomes a series of laws, then something is wrong. The teachings of our faith are meant to help us grow in our relationship with God and grow as people. God’s teachings are there to help us. The most basic of these are the Commandments and the 613 laws that God taught Moses to govern our whole society.

 

Everything God gives us and asks of us, is to help us. God tells us that if we want to do well as a society, if we want to flourish, then we need to stick to these principles: It is wrong to murder, to commit adultery, to steal, to lie, to cheat. We must honour God and keep God at the center of all that we do. And that includes keeping Sunday as a holy day, a day when God is worshiped because God deserves to be worshiped.

 




When the Jewish people remained faithful to God, their society flourished. The Commandments gave them the direction they needed, so that things would work for them as individuals and as a society and that included all kinds of laws for day-to-day living (613 laws), even down to laws as to how to conduct business fairly, so that everyone would benefit. The wisdom in the Old Testament—especially the first five books of the Old Testament which make up the Torah, or Law—is amazing, so amazing that it could only have come from God.

 

The Commandments are essentially a blueprint for living. If we follow these commandments and do our best to live them, we will do well as individuals and flourish as a society. God’s teachings help us to grow closer to him and to become 'the best version of ourselves’ that we can be. That is basically what God told the people through Moses, some 4000 years ago and those principles have not changed. 

 

Throughout the centuries the people continually strayed away from the Commandments and worshipped false gods and when they did this their society began to fall apart and their enemies began to gain the upper hand, like what we see happening around us. Then they realised what they had done and they asked forgiveness from God and tried to be faithful again. The Bible is essentially a collection of stories showing this. The people continually strayed away from God, get into trouble, then realise their mistake and ask forgiveness and God always helps them back on their feet, helping them that God must be at the center.

 

Another thing that has not changed is that we are still very good at coming up with reasons why we don’t have to keep God’s Commandments. People have always been good at coming up with excuses, but ultimately we are going against the very thing that will help us. 

 

We talk a lot about freedom in our country and all the people who have fought and laid down their lives so that we can be free and thank God we do enjoy great freedom. But true freedom comes about when we choose what is good. Doing anything we want sounds like freedom, but if it is without God given laws to guide us, then it usually means we lean towards what is sinful. Living by the principles God gives us is what leads us to true freedom. Choosing to live a life of sin may seem like freedom, but in fact it is a kind of slavery, because what is sinful will ultimately destroy us and it does not bring happiness. Saying that we must abide by laws may sound like we are not free, but in fact that is what leads us to the greatest interior freedom. No laws lead to chaos, both in our society and as individuals.

 




God’s creation has an order to it. We can see in nature that there are certain natural laws that make everything work. The planets must follow a particular order or they will crash into each other. Traffic has to follow a particular order, or there is chaos. As human beings, we also have to follow a particular order, or there is chaos. God is the one who shows us exactly what that order is. When our society decides that we no longer need God or the order that He gives us, it leads to chaos.

 

If God is pushed out, something else will take its place. Communism is a perfect example. Communism denies God and the state takes God’s place. Everything must obey the state and the human being has no worth or value, so it can be disposed of at will.

 

Adolph Hitler based his new world order on replacing the Ten Commandments, with a ‘higher order,’ his order, a man-made order.

This is what we are fighting against… the curse of so-called morals… against the so-called ten commandments.’[i]

 

This was why he wanted to destroy the Jewish people, because the Ten Commandments were given to the world through them. As long as they existed, they were a threat to him, because they brought the Ten Commandments.

 

Jesus spoke about this in the parable about a demon being cast out:

When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, it roams through arid regions searching for rest, but on finding none, it says, ‘I shall return to my home from which I came.’ But upon returning it finds it swept and clean and put in order. Then it goes and brings back seven other spirits more wicked than itself, who move in and dwell there and the last condition of that person is worse than the first. (Luke 11: 24-26)

 




Notice how it says when the spirit returns it finds things have been put in order. What Jesus is saying is that if God is not there, there is a void and something will fill that void.

 

In an actual exorcism, if a person who has been freed of any kind of evil does not replace that evil—whether it is actually something demonic, or just destructive behavior like an addiction—the evil will just return. The various twelve-step programs show this. If someone is to overcome an addiction, they have to replace that addiction with a healthier behavior, or they will just relapse. The same thing happens on the bigger scale too. If God is taken out of society, evil will take its place. There won’t just remain a void.

 

This will mean that I can’t have everything my way, but we must choose who it is we wish to serve. If God asks us to keep Sunday holy, what takes priority, worshipping God, or something else? If we live by the Commandments it will make us different from many others, but it has always been that way and that is where we must decide who it is we wish to follow. 

 

It is tempting to say, ‘I’m sure God doesn’t mind,’ or ‘God will understand.’ But if God doesn’t mind, then why did He give us the commandments in the first place? Why did Jesus get angry when he saw how the temple was being turned into a business instead of a place of prayer? There is nowhere in Scripture where it says God doesn’t mind and all that Jesus taught shows us that God certainly does mind.

 

God revealed himself to the Jewish people as a moral God, who will hold us accountable for our actions. That was unique in ancient Israel. Before this there was never an understanding of God being moral, or interested in our well-being. 

 

It keeps going back to the same thing. God created us to share in his happiness. God shows us how to live so that we will enjoy that happiness, but we still have to choose who we will serve.

 

I am the Lord your God, you shall not have strange gods before me.’ 

 



[i] Herman Rauschning, "Preface," The Ten Commandments: Ten Short Novels of Hitler's War Against the Moral Code, ed. Armin L. Robinson (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943), xiii.