Our Duty To
Judge
Twenty-Eighth Week of Year II Monday October 10, 2016
The Responsorial Psalm celebrates (verse 8) obedience to God’s laws as a blessing that “lifts us up” to “make [us] sit with princes”: “Blessed be the name of the Lord forever” (Psalm 113).
In
Galatians 4: 22 to 5:1 Paul tells us
that obedience to Christ frees us from slavish obedience to laws. “Stand firm,
therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
The
“yoke of slavery” is mindless conformity to human rules, doing exactly what
they say without exercising personal judgment. We see an example in priests and
laity who follow all the liturgical instructions in the book without asking
whether a particular rule will help their own community celebrate the Eucharist
with greater understanding and joy or not.
In
the Catholic Church (and in St. Paul’s theology) it is considered disobedience to obey like this. The
basic principle is that no one should do what a rule says without first asking
whether this will achieve the goal of
the rule. True obedience is not to do what a legislator says, but to achieve
what the legislator wants. And every lawmaker knows that it is impossible to
make a law that will “work” in every country, culture and particular community
if applied exactly as it is written.
To
decide freely in particular cases whether it would be good to do what a rule
says is responsible stewardship. Every right is given in
virtue of an obligation. We have the right
to judge whether conformity to a rule will achieve its purpose here and now
because we are obliged to. Because we
are consecrated “stewards of the kingship of Christ” by Baptism, we are
committed to responsible, discerning leadership in the work of establishing
God’s reign.
Vatican
Council II called for “collaborative ministry” in the Church. This summons
every member of the Church to “sit with… the princes of the people” (Responsorial Psalm, verse 8) to discern
what should be done.
Luke 11: 29-32 tells us that
future generations will condemn “this generation” because we knew that Jesus
gave us “something greater than Solomon” in the gift of the Holy Spirit poured
out in our hearts. But we refuse to listen to the Spirit, or even to ask what
the Spirit is saying in the Church, in our own community or in our individual
hearts. We prefer to conform blindly and irresponsibly to general rules,
claiming that they dispense us from questioning, reflecting, judging and
discerning. This is to “submit again to
a yoke of slavery” while Jesus summons us as “faithful stewards” to take up the
responsibility of freedom.
Initiative: Be
Christ’s steward. Judge everything in the light of reality and the Holy
Spirit.
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