My dear brothers and sisters, I am glad to be with you here in St. John Bosco’s, Erskine, for Mass on the 3rd Sunday of Lent when we hear read to us in the liturgy of the Word the Ten Commandments. It is always good for us to hear these Ten Commandments listed in full, but especially so during Lent so that we can measure our behaviour and our conversion and our spiritual growth against the standards of God’s unchanging Law.
You will remember that when the young man in the gospel approached Jesus and asked him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”, Jesus answered first in terms of the Ten Commandments. “If you would enter life”, Jesus tells the young man, “keep the commandments” and he mentions especially, “You shall not kill”, “You shall not commit adultery”, “You shall not steal”, “You shall not bear false witness.” He goes on to tell the young man that to be perfect he should sell everything he owns and follow him. To the commandments, Jesus adds the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience which are fundamental Christian virtues and the core of consecrated religious life. But the foundation of a good life remains the Ten Commandments, which are brought to fulfilment by Jesus’ new commandment of love and lived in the power of the Spirit.
The Ten Commandments, the First Reading today tells us, were given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai some five thousand years ago. Since then, these commandments have been the basic moral markers of our civilisation. If we do not murder each other in the streets or do violence to each other over every feud and quarrel, it is ultimately because we were told, “Thou shalt not kill.” If we do not take what does not belong to us or just take what we want because we are stronger or more powerful than others, it is ultimately because we were told, “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods”. If mothers and fathers have a special role and place in our society, it is ultimately because we were told, “Honour your mother and father”. And if family life is in any way stable in our society, it is because we were told “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and “Thou shalt not covet they neighbour’s wife”. In our civilisation most of these commandments are the basis of positive law and of our legal systems. And to the extent that there is crime, injustice or family breakdown, it is fundamentally because these commandments have been set aside by our society or because these commandments are not embedded in the hearts of people through the Holy Spirit.
Of course the Ten Commandments themselves have an order, and the second group of Commandments is based on the first three, and especially on the First Commandment. As Jesus told the young man who asked about eternal life, there is only One who is good. And in the First Commandment, God tells us: “I am the Lord your God – You shall have no gods except me”. God alone is the guarantor of the Ten Commandments. Without acknowledging God, there is ultimately no persuasive reason why I should not kill my neighbour, steal from him, lie to him, take his wife and his property. And the crisis of western civilisation today is that too many people, and a lot of powerful people and powerful interests, want to have law and order, civilisation, wealth and prosperity, a happiness and fulfilment without God. They are creating an empty shrine at the centre of the project of human progress. And this is a sad illusion.
If there is an empty shrine at the centre of the modern project, then that project is fatally undermined. We could not have had a clearer indication of that than when thousands of people rampaged in an orgy of destruction through London and other cities last summer without any respect for their neighbour’s life, safety or property. The courts are still dealing with the rioters. We cannot tell people to live as if there is no God and expect good things to happen. At the same time, we need to have confidence in the religious truth of the Ten Commandments, observe them in our lives and teach them to our children, for these commandments and the virtues they encourage are the foundation of a just and fair democratic society. “You shall have no other gods before me.” “Do not take the name of the Lord in vain”. “Keep holy the Sabbath day”. These commandments too need to be obeyed and followed in order to have quality of life in this world and eternal life in heaven.
So today, we are called once more to unconditional faith in the Lord our God, to have no other gods but him, and to renew our obedience to the Ten Commandments and to live them in the spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and of his commandment of love, for our own spiritual good, but also for the good of our family and of our community and even of our society.