Moral Life

Wednesday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time C-2

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 86 (85):1-3 Turn your ear, O Lord, and answer me; save the servant who trusts in you, my God. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I cry to you all the day long.

Collect O God, who cause the minds of the faithful to unite in a single purpose, grant your people to love what you command and to desire what you promise, that, amid the uncertainties of this world, our hearts may be fixed on that place where true gladness is found. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: 2 Thessalonians 3:6-10.16-18; Psalm 127; Matthew 23:27-32

Jesus said, Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers! (Matthew 23:27-32)

Moral Life The nature and reality of morality is a fundamental philosophical issue. One modern philosopher stated that David Hume was the sharpest mind in British Philosophy, and that Theism had to come to engage with Hume in order to get a hearing. Hume's main ethical writings are to be found in A Treatise on Human Nature (1739–40), An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), parts of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), and in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). Hume's ethical thought is part of his attempt to explain all of human nature in terms of natural causes and events, including how we make moral judgments and why we have religious beliefs. Visible, physical nature is all there is. For Hume, everything about us is open to empirical investigation and to explanation in naturalistic terms. Hume often compares humans with other animals, tracing the bases of human morality to features we share with them. For instance, moral judgments are essentially functions of sentiment. Traits that elicit our approval are those that are useful or agreeable to oneself or others. Our ends depend on what we desire, which depends on what we feel (with respect to pleasure and pain). Morality is thus based on sentiment and passion — and by positing such a system he excludes, of course, God as a moral assessor. The long and the short of it is that the physical and empirically verifiable world is all that there is. Hume’s writings were an important engine in the advance of the secular view in which God, sin, and one’s inner moral state are but shadows. But Hume is wrong. We perceive that there is a moral law that cannot be reduced to how we feel, to sensations and passions. We are conscious by moral perception that we are morally corrupt as the case may be. Indeed, in our clear moments we can see that the moral law and our inner moral condition is far more real than the rocks and trees we see before us. Hume thought that the only hard facts were facts that felt hard.

But this is wrong. Sin is a hard objective fact — and anyhow, within the normal and healthy conscience, sin will be felt to be very hard. We can shut our eyes to the mountains, the valleys and to the physical things about us, but we cannot shut our eyes to manifest duty and the moral collapse and degradation following on its neglect. The worst character in Shakespeare’s Macbeth was Lady Macbeth. She was a veritable Herodias, the architect of John the Baptist’s execution. Her heart was hard as flint, but she could not escape the tightening grip of her own fearsome conscience. Sleep-walking, she plaintively cried, “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” (5.1) trying, in her sleep, to wash her hands clean of the blood of King Duncan. Morality and the inner moral state of man is the most real thing in the world. Sanctity soars above the mountains in its hard reality and in its significance for the world. The most important thing in life is not to feel and gain coins but to be good and holy. I say all this to introduce our Lord’s words directed to “the teachers of the law and the Pharisees” in our Gospel today (Matthew 23:27-32). Our Lord exulted in the beauty of the lilies of the field, but he exulted far more in moral goodness. Conversely, he powerfully lambasted deliberate sin and spiritual corruption. These were the principal realities in the world, and David Hume — subtle and influential philosopher though he was — had it all wrong. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” Those teachers of the law and Pharisees to whom our Lord spoke were “whitewashed tombs,” and “inside” were full of “everything unclean.” They were dead within — “full of dead men’s bones.” “Woe to you!” our Lord solemnly warned them. The tragedy of our age is that, characteristically, we have lost the sense of sin and have reduced sin to something like a mere subjective state or feeling.

What we can see and touch is only part of what there is. In actual fact, what we cannot see and touch with our senses is much more real. Pre-eminent among the unseen realities of life is man’s moral and spiritual condition. As we think of Christ’s condemnation of the unseen state of heart of the scribes and Pharisees, let us also think of those whom he highly praised. At his first meeting with Nathanael, he accorded to him the highest praise. He was a true Israelite, one in whom there was no guile. Let us make goodness and holiness of heart our quest. This is the true and solid foundation of everything, and it will take us to heaven.

(E.J.Tyler)

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A Second Reflection: (2 Thessalonians 3:6-10.16-18)

Being like God by Means of Our Work In his second letter to the Thessalonians (ch.3: 6-10.16-18) St Paul refers to work — he is severe in his strictures concerning the one who refuses to work. They are to "keep away from any of the brothers who refuses to work or to live according to the tradition we passed on to you." They are to imitate Paul and his companions, who never ceased to work. The first pages of the Bible portray God at work, the work of creation. His work is set in a framework the devout reader will easily understand. God's work is presented as being a working week, as it were, for he is shown as completing the work of creation in six days and then resting on the seventh. All could understand this, that God really does work, and that our daily work, set within the normal working day week with the sabbath rest at the end of it, makes us like unto him. It is therefore unlike God not to be willing to work. On one occasion when our Lord was criticized for doing what the leaders of the Jews said was not permitted on the Sabbath, he replied that his Father was working, so he would too.

It is in our work that we fulfill the duties and responsibilities that God in his providence has given us to fulfill. So we should work with all our heart, doing all for the glory of God. In this way through our work we are sanctified, we sanctify our work itself and make it a worthy offering to God, and by means of it we sanctify others — those for whom we are working. Let us be like God then, by filling up our lives with the work he has given us to do, no matter how ordinary it may appear. Therein lies the grandeur of the ordinary working life.

(E.J.Tyler)

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