6th Sunday Year B - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2015

Do you ever wonder why Catholic politicians, or Catholics who vote for them, presumably all good people, sometimes seem to be unconcerned about party policies that to others contravene important matters of conscience? Today’s Second Reading looks an inoffensive little passage. But it occurred to me during the week how deceptively relevant it is to this issue of conscience.

Ask people how to live as Christians, and they might tell you, “Keep the commandments!” Yet St Paul spent much of his apostolic life trying to wean his Jewish compatriots away from their fixation on the Law and Commandments. The Commandments, of course, were very quickly seen to be inadequate to address changing situations and times. Though they retained their iconic importance, the Jewish scribes and lawyers recognised the need to continue to tease them out and adapt them. Their added regulations became more numerous and more detailed, yet never kept quite up to date and dangerously missed the inevitable cultural blindspots. Paul saw the futility of the whole exercise. In addition, he recognised that knowing laws does not help you to keep them. Even more significantly, he saw that living under directives and restrictions, even those understood as originating from God, was to live as slaves. For him, the distinctive experience of followers of Christ was that they were free agents, in personal relationship with him, and guided by his Holy Spirit.

So if commandments were out, what was in? How were Christians to live their lives as free followers of Jesus? How could they open themselves reliably to the guidance of the Spirit? Effectively, Paul said, “That is what your conscience is for”. Unfortunately, the Church has been slow to trust Paul. Church lawyers and theologians took over where the Jewish lawyers and rabbis left off; and morality became an exercise simply of obeying what we called “The Commandments” but which in fact were the hundreds of rules and regulations that surrounded them. Conscience was made redundant; and all we needed was a good memory and a readiness to obey. 

Here is where today’s passage is enlightening. It finished up, Take me for your model ... Paul said model, not overseer. A model invites imitation, but does not impose it. He then said that he took Christ as his model. To do that and, more importantly, to want to do that, he needed to know Christ well. He had never been a disciple of Jesus. He knew him by loving him, just as you and I can get to know and to love Christ – through spending time thoughtfully, prayerfully, with him. [Those who are happily married know how love opens them to ever-deeper knowledge of, and commitment to, their partner.] Motivation clearly comes from the heart, and familiar knowledge does, too.

As far as Paul was concerned, the Jesus he knew was totally focussed on God his Father. So, not surprisingly, he saw as the non-negotiable starting point of all conscience formation a spontaneous sense and personal valuing of the centrality of God. He insisted, Whatever you do, do it for the glory of God. Simple, but crucially important. Unless God really and personally matters, Christian conscience formation is impossible. 

Essentially, we give glory to God by choosing to love one another. That is the next requirement for conscience formation. As Paul put it in today’s passage, Never do anything offensive to anyone. Notice the two words, never, and, anyone. He then stated the same principle positively, Be helpful to everyone at all times, the operative words being again, everyone, and all times. How do we arrive at such respect? It is a process; it takes time, a lifetime. That choice originates in the growing insight into our own dignity as persons loved unconditionally by God despite all our failings and persistent blindness; and then in coming to realise that God values everyone else to the same extent. From that it follows that the common good is the basis of every peaceful society.

The truly formed conscience comes into its own from there, and gives more motivated and clearer direction than a thousand commandments.