The Ten Commandments Transformed in Christ – 3rd Sunday of Lent – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; March 3, 2024

Sometimes ignorance excuses; sometimes it does not. Ignorance excuses when we had no way of knowing or when we took due care to find out; ignorance does not excuse in matters that we can and should know.

The ten commandments are something that every Catholic, and indeed every human being, is obliged to know. Every human being has a fundamental obligation to seek the truth in matters moral and religious, in other words, how to live rightly, and anyone who takes that obligation seriously will, with the help of God’s grace, no doubt come to the truth. (Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae 2)

Further, I would say that every Catholic is obliged to know the Creed, the seven sacraments, the ten commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary, as well as the precepts of the Church. They must know these things and teach them to their children. It is necessary not only to know these things by memory but we must also have at least an elementary understanding. Of course we must also put these things into practice, but we can hardly do that if we do not know them. This is what we are to live by, and it will not do for us to go before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ and say, “But I didn’t know.” Then we might hear those dread words, Neither do I know you. Depart from me you worker of iniquity. (cf. Mt 7:23)

Today we have heard the ten commandments, as they were first proclaimed directly by God to the people of Israel. The other precepts of the Mosaic law were given to Moses who passed them on to the people. The ten commandments were spoken by God in the hearing of all. (cf. Dt 5:22-27)

The Mosaic law contains judgments that applied only to that people at that time before the coming of Christ and also contains ceremonial laws that have been brought to fulfillment by Christ and have been transformed in the law of the sacraments of the Church. The ten commandments, however, remain valid always, everywhere, and for everyone.

Now, Jesus summed up the whole law of God when he answered the question about the greatest commandment in the law, saying, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. (Mt 22:37-40)

The love of God is the deep motive for the fulfillment of all the commandments. The ten commandments do no more than specify the basic minimum involved in loving God and neighbor; the first three commandments specify the requirements of love of God, while the second seven specify the love of neighbor.

The first three commandments prohibit false worship, the misuse of God’s name (commanding thereby reverence towards the name of God), and the dedication of one day in the week to the worship of God. The next five commandments, by what they command and prohibit, reveal the fundamental goods of human life: parental authority, the good of human life itself, the good of marriage, which is the proper source of human life, the good of property in the service of life and family, and the good of truth, without which it is impossible to live together in peace. The last two commandments enter into the interior order of the soul, protecting the good of purity of heart by restraining the destructive impulses of lust and avarice.

All ten commandments belong to what is called the “natural law,” which is why they oblige not only Christians and Jews, but all men. St. Thomas Aquinas defines the natural law as the participation of the rational creature in the eternal law. (cf. ST IaIIae q.91a2)

What does that mean? We could put it this way. The eternal God governs the physical universe through the laws, like the law of gravity, that he has instilled in the order of things. He governs plant life by the laws of growth and reproduction that he has instilled in the nature of the different kinds of plants. He governs animal life through the different instincts he has placed in each kind of animal. Inanimate bodies, plants and animals are governed by God, but do not govern themselves. They never disobey the law of God because they do not have a nature capable of obeying or disobeying.

Man is subject to the law of bodies and the laws of living growth; we also possess a certain animal instinct, but while we do not determine the nature of the instinct, we are meant to govern and direct that instinct, rather than merely be driven by it. That is because through the gift of reason, which makes us to be in the image of God, we are capable of understanding the nature of the world in which we live, together with our own nature, and are meant to direct our lives in accord with the law that we perceive written in the order created by God. To participate in the eternal law means that we are not merely governed by God, but are capable of actively collaborating in his governance, directing our own lives according to his law, written in the natural order.

Alas, all this has been obscured by the reality of sin. By giving us the ten commandments, God renews our knowledge of the natural law, helping us to perceive clearly the law written in order of things. Jesus Christ gives us the grace to keep the commandments.

The ten commandments belong to the natural law, even the commandments pertaining to our relation to God. That is why St. Paul wrote: The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So, they are without excuse. (Rm 1:18-20)

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, having had no instruction in religion, I met two boys in the neighborhood who asked me if I was a Christian. I asked what that was. They replied, “A Christian is someone who believes in God.” “What is God?” I asked. “A being who is all powerful and knows all things,” they replied. “Then I am a Christian,” I said. Well, nothing further came from that conversation and their understanding of what is required to be a Christian was a bit deficient, but the point is that with no previous knowledge of God, my young mind so readily accepted the reality of an all-powerful, all-knowing being.

Indeed, there is much more to being a Christian, and while the first three commandments belong to the natural law, they are set forth in a manner that specifies them in regard to the covenant God had established with the people of Israel.

The 1^st commandment begins, I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. This affirmation actually sets all the commandments in the context of the covenant relation of Israel to God, giving as the motive for keeping the commandments the special goodness that God had shown Israel in delivering them from slavery in Egypt and making them to be his special people.

The covenant, however, has been transformed into the new and eternal covenant in the Blood of Christ, offered always anew in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In that context we could restate the commandment, as though spoken to us directly by Jesus Christ, “I, the Lord, am your God, who by my death on the Cross and by my resurrection, have delivered you from this passing, dying world, setting you free from slavery to sin and death.”

The 3^rd commandment sets aside one day of the week for the worship of God. The natural law would require time dedicated specifically to the worship of God. Yet, again, this commandment is specified in the context of the covenant with Israel. The Sabbath, which is Saturday, the seventh day of the week, is set aside as a day rest, commemorating in particular the work of creation, or God as the Creator of the universe.

God’s “work” in creating the universe was effortless; he commanded and it came to be. (cf. Ps 33[32]:6,9) His rest, then, is not something different from his “work” so much as an expression of his transcendence over the work of creation. There is infinitely more to be found in God’s eternity than to be found in the whole of his creation. So, God rests in himself above and beyond creation. Through the worship of God, we are called to rest in him, above and beyond all the work he has given to us. We are not meant to be mere slaves, but sons, sharing the life of our heavenly Father.

Christians, however, do not keep the Sabbath, but the Lord’s Day, Sunday. This comes to us not from sacred Scripture, but from sacred Tradition. The Sabbath has been transferred to the Lord’s Day because the original creation, which was marred by sin, has been redeemed by Christ and is on the way to complete renewal through his death and resurrection.

Sin, which had marred the original creation, also turned the temple of God into a marketplace. The market is taken up with the activities of the world that was created in six days; the seventh day, which was meant to raise hearts and minds above this world to God has no place for the market. The 24/7 world in which we now live does not really have a seventh day; now the week begins on Monday and has two sixth days, the two day weekend in which Christ is crucified anew.

The transfer from the Sabbath to the Lord’s Day was already implied in the words of Christ in today’s Gospel, referring to his own Body: Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. The worship of the Old Testament, priesthood, sacrifice, altar, and temple all were prophetic figures of Christ to come; he brought all to fulfillment in his person, establishing thereby the new and eternal covenant.

Sunday, the day of the resurrection, marks the beginning of the new creation in Christ. The Body of Christ, crucified and risen, is the beginning of the new creation, the new temple, not made by human hands, and also the new sacrifice, offered by the new high priest, Jesus Christ, who offers himself upon the Cross and continues to offer himself through the hands of his ministers in the Holy Eucharist. Further, being one God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, he receives the very sacrifice that he offers.

Jesus Christ crucified is the power of God and the wisdom of God. He is the power of God, who through the weakness of the Cross vanquished sin and death and bestows upon us the grace and power to keep the commandments of God. He is the wisdom of God, who by the folly of the Cross has revealed the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the God who is love, and the deepest rationale for keeping the commandments.

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 Jn 4:10-11)