Catholic morality

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Remaining Free

3rd Sunday of Lent – Year B

Fr. Mark Gatto

Preached: March 7, 2021

When you think of Catholic morality, what comes to mind for you?  Sometimes we think of commandments, rules, laws.  We think of someone saying, “do not do this”, “do not do that”.  Morality becomes something that restricts our freedom.  God becomes a judge controlling our behaviour, God becomes like the commandant of a prison camp.

But, in the Book of Exodus, when the Ten Commandments is presented to the people, God begins by saying, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”  It begins by recalling how God had set the people free.  This is the God who is a liberator, who desires that we be truly free.  So, the Commandments are not restrictions, not rules to control our behaviour.  They are a path that guides us to true freedom.  After God has set the people free from slavery in Egypt, this God wants the people to remain free in the deepest sense in their new life.

Catholic morality at its core is meant to be a way and a path to true love and true freedom.   God wants you to be and remain free in the truest sense possible.  The commandments are guides which lead us to a life that is free, that prevents us from becoming slaves to anything in this life.  I will just give a couple examples of how the Commandments lead us away from slavery and into freedom.  I will look at the First and Third Commandments.

The First Commandment is “you shall not make for yourself an idol.”  You shall have no god besides the one true God.  What do we mean by idols?  When we make anything in this life an absolute, something in this life becomes all-consuming, more important than anything else.  In our society that could be money, drugs, desire for power, or even peer pressure.

Is there anything in your life that has become obsessive, has become more important than God?  The problem is that anything in this life that becomes more important than God, that becomes an idol, ends up taking over our life.  We become a slave to it.  We see that in an obvious way with drug or alcohol addictions.

But, for many of us it is more subtle.  Our concern with what others think of us can make us a slave to pleasing others, or to be overly concerned with how we appear to others.  Most crimes are committed by people who have made money a god, so they will do anything to get and keep it.  Including illegal or unjust actions.  Is there anything that has become like a god in your life?  God wants you to remain free, not to become slave to anything or anyone in this life.

The Third Commandment is “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”  This Sabbath principle found in the Scriptures is not about some arbitrary rule or law so that God can see that we will obey.  The Sabbath principle is a very human need.  We need to rest, we need to stop from our daily routines, we need time to reflect.  We human beings are not machines.  Without sabbath in our lives, we lose sight of what matters, we forget who we are and what is most important.

This is why it is so important to have sabbath time in our life.  In our western world, many of us suffer from being workaholics.  Sometimes our economic system encourages us to be workaholics.  But, God wants us to remain free, to remember who we are and what is ultimately important.

You can go through each of the Ten Commandments and discover how each of them protects us from falling into some form of slavery, guiding us into freedom. Jesus getting upset in the Temple is rooted in God’s desire that we remain free.  He is angry at their greed, at their system that excluded the poor.  The Temple was meant to be a place where people remember the true God.  Instead, they have made idols that hid God or kept the poor away from God.

Our God is a liberator, a God who desires to set us free and that we remain free.  Our Catholic morality, at its core, is about freedom.  The Commandments are a guide to remaining free.  God wants you to be free and to remain free.

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choices-decisions

Your Decisions and Choices Matter

choices-decisions

6th Sunday In Ordinary Time

Fr. Mark Gatto

Preached: February 16, 2020

Catholic morality is more than just following a set of rules. The commandments of God is more than just arbitrary rules God imposes.

Catholic morality and the commandments of God are like light that allows us to see a good path to follow.  A path that leads to goodness, to peace.  Our choices, our decisions in life, they matter.  They make a difference.

God has given us freedom to make decisions and choices in our life.   But, there are consequences to this freedom, to these choices and decisions.  As the Book of Sirach, that wisdom literature from the Old Testament says in our first reading, “Before each person are life and death, good and evil…”

The commandments lead us to peace, to life.  People do not normally choose evil or choose to sin because they want to suffer or hurt others.  But we can be convinced falsely that the evil choice or the sinful path is actually something that will be good for us.  That it will bring us happiness or something more in life.  We are easily led in this false direction.  But, our choices make a real difference to us and to others.

Our choices today as a human race are crucial, truly between life and death.  When we look at the weapons we have today, the nuclear weapons that exist, our decisions that lead to conflict, to war, are capable of leading to incredible destruction, even destroying our world.  It is for this reason, that it is crucial that we make decisions that lead to peace, to overcome divisions, to change our reliance on military power.

When we look at the reality of climate change, global warming, environmental damage, again it is crucial that we make decisions that face this situation honestly.  Refusing to make good decisions in this area is capable of leading to great destruction of this planet we live on, destroying many species and eventually doing great harm to the ecological world we rely on for our life.

So, our decisions and choices as a human race matter greatly.

Our decisions and choices as individuals also have great potential for harm.  When I am not faithful to my promises, when I lie, when I cheat, when I am greedy, and so on, this harms me personally but also harms others near me.  Broken families, loneliness, poverty, these are caused by human sin, by decisions and choices people make which lead to harm.

If you are being tempted to make a choice or a decision that you know to be sinful, do not allow anyone to convince you that it does not matter.  It does matter.  It makes a difference.  It will create a path which will not lead you to ultimate peace, it will result in harm for others, in your family, in your community.

Jesus says he did not come to abolish the law.  But, he is calling us to do more than just follow rules.  We are to become people capable of making good decisions, good choices.  That we learn to use our freedom in a way that brings life to us and to others.  Do not accept mediocrity.

Your decisions and choices matter.

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