Rules Without
Relationship Are Deadly
Twenty-Seventh Week of Year II Thursday October 6, 2016
The Responsorial Psalm proclaims God “drawn near” in Jesus: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited his people” (see Luke 1:68).
Galatians 3: 1-5 is Paul’s proclamation
of the “stewardship of freedom.” The Galatians,
who had accepted Christianity, were falling into the trap of thinking they had
to observe all the Jewish religious customs which the Church had already
decided not to impose on Gentile converts.1 Something in us makes us
want to find religious security in the faithful observance of a clear set of
rules and practices. But the word “faithful” here is in direct contradiction to
its root meaning. This focus on rules and observances it not “faith-full” at
all.
It is a very human way of trying to keep God on our side by doing what we
think God wants us to do — thinking that his fidelity to us depends on our
fidelity to him (again, using the word “fidelity” in a sense that leaves faith,
fides, out of the picture). This
turns religion into a system, a relationship with God that is essentially a quid pro quo that does not require
personal knowledge and love of God at all.
If
this sounds exaggerated, ask yourself when you first began to feel you had a
“friendship” with Jesus Christ? When did you begin to feel you knew him as a
person? That you wanted to do things for him just because you loved him?
You may have had this relationship with him from
an early age. But thousands of Christians appear, at least, to “perform their
religious duties” just out of a sense of obligation. The old catechisms even
spoke of Mass as our “Sunday obligation” and specified just how much of the
Mass we had to be present at to “fulfill our obligation.” And many people still
focus more on what they have to do to
be good Catholics than on whom they
are doing it for, or how they need to do it to experience
personal intimacy with God.
Law observance alone is not faithful
stewardship. To be authentic Christians we need to experience that God has “visited his people.”
The experience
of the Holy Spirit was so manifest in the early Church that Paul based his
case on it when writing to the Galatians: “Did you receive the Spirit by doing
the works of the law or by believing what
you heard?” Would that argument work with you?
In
Luke 11: 5-13 Jesus bases his
teaching on the knowledge he has — and we should have — of God as a person, a
friend, a father. “Suppose one of you has a friend….” and “What father among
you….”
Our
religion, when we live it authentically, is personal
interaction with God. This is our heritage. We need to preserve it as faith-full stewards. “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he
has visited his people.”
1Acts 15: 19-29.
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