Do Good, Avoid Evil

Fourth Sunday of Advent A

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Is 45: 8 Drop down dew from above, you heavens, and let the clouds rain down the Just One; let the earth be opened and bring forth a Saviour.

Collect Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord, your grace into our hearts, that we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ your Son was made known by the message of an Angel, may by his Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of his Resurrection. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture: Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 24:1-6; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-24

This is how the birth of Christ happened. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. Whereupon Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing publicly to expose her, intended to put her away privately. But while he thought on these things, behold the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, fear not to take to yourself Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you will call his name JESUS. For he will save his people from their sins.” Now all this was done so that what was spoken by the prophet might be fulfilled, “Behold a virgin will be with child and will bring forth a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel, which means, God with us.” And Joseph waking from his sleep did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife to himself. (Matthew 1:18-24)

Do Good, Avoid Evil It is very obvious that during our Lord’s public ministry very many misunderstood his mission. It is clear, in fact, that numerous people completely misunderstood the mission of the expected Messiah and had no notion of his divinely ordained methods. Very commonly, his kingship was understood as a political and perhaps a military one. Our Gospel passage today makes it clear that St Joseph was informed from heaven, through the person of the angel, just what the mission of his future foster‑son would be. Joseph is not told very much about the mission of his wife’s child but the essential point is there. It was to save his people from their sins. Mary his betrothed “will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:18‑24). The burden afflicting and bringing death to God’s people are their sins, and the child will save his people from them. This announcement of the Saviour’s mission gives us the opportunity to think a little about sin, for sin was the preoccupation of God in sending his divine Son to us. St Paul tells us that of themselves all men are under the power of sin, and that the wages of sin are death. The Ten Commandments spell out very clearly the ways God’s chosen people can and do sin, but what is to be said of those who have not heard God’s voice as expressed in the Ten Commandments? Well, there is another voice. Man has been endowed by God with a conscience commanding him to do good and avoid evil. This is a natural law implanted in his very being. St Paul writes in the Letter to the Romans that “I have been sold as a slave to sin. I cannot understand my own behaviour. I fail to carry out the things I want to do, and I find myself dong the very things I hate. When I act against my own will, that means that I have a self that acknowledges that the Law is good, and so the thing behaving in that way is not my own self but sin living in me.” So St Paul states that “I have a self that acknowledges that the Law is good.” Every man and woman has this “self,” this voice within. All have a conscience and whatever be the errors of people in their practical moral judgment, the basic command of conscience is clear. The good must be done and evil avoided. It is a basic natural law commanding that each person seek to know what is the right thing to do, and then to do it.

This natural moral law pressed on each person by his conscience is absolute, and all know this to be the case. When the Second World War ended, various Nazis were put on trial at Nuremburg for crimes against humanity. It was no excuse to say that “I was told to do it” because there was (and is) a higher law than that of the state. The natural moral law is above all and is to be used in judging the morality of rulers and states. Knowing as he does that the good is to be done and evil avoided, each person instinctively knows that the life of another must be respected. It is part of the natural law, and this law is objective. All instinctively know that it is wrong to steal and to rape and to kidnap and to commit adultery. Of course, generally an education in these moral prescriptions is needed and the education should be good and correct. But the upshot of such an ethical or religious education is that the one thus educated recognizes in his own mind and without further appeal to authority that certain things are wrong. If one does violate the natural moral law at least in respect to the obvious rights of others, then irrespective of whether one has a religion to help, the offender will be liable to being punished. Furthermore, if one has a religious sense, one will instinctively recognize that these dictates of one’s natural moral sense express the will and pleasure of God. That is to say, the prudent and religious man knows that the voice of conscience is a faint echo of the voice of God, beginning with that “voice” from within which says that the good must be done and evil avoided. Violations of the natural moral law are sins, and most have a sense of this. The immoral person vaguely senses that he is displeasing to God. I do think, incidentally, that an important basis of harmony and cooperation among the religions of the world and among all people of goodwill, is the universality of the natural moral law and its natural connection with God and therefore with religion. All religions must conform to what is known to be right and wrong — with the natural moral law, that is. Now, my point in discussing conscience and the natural law is to relate it to Christ and his mission. Conscience characteristically instils a sense of sin. All men ought therefore be conscious of having sinned, and the Good News is that a Saviour has come. Christ our Lord came to save all men from their sins.

Let us think of the sins of the world when we think of the saving mission of Christ. He came to save man from his sins, whether or not man knew or knows of the Ten Commandments or the commands of Christ. Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We are called to belong to him and belonging to him means renouncing sin and embracing faith in Jesus and all that Jesus has revealed. We are also called to bring Jesus to others, and with him to bring the Good News of salvation from sin.

(E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.1950-1964 (The Moral Law)

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