Homily for Friday, 28 July 2017– Ferial

Friday of the 16th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 11; Matthew 13:18-23

What commandments do we find the easiest to keep? And what commandments do we find the most difficult to keep?

Today we hear in Exodus of God calling Moses up Mount Sinai to give him the Ten Commandments. We know that the people of Israel whom Moses was leading through the desert were able to hear God as he gave the Commandments to Moses, so God hid nothing from the people as to the Law he expected them to observe. Do we ever wonder, though, if the people of Israel were standing at Mount Sinai, hearing God give the Ten Commandments to Moses, and thinking if not saying things like these among themselves: “That commandment not to kill should be easy enough, but that commandment not to covet— what does “covet” mean again?— may be more difficult. We know that one of the first of the Ten Commandments the people of Israel would break, when they made the golden calf, was the commandment not to make idols; images of other gods. What were the most and least difficult commandments to keep for the people of ancient Israel?

We might ask the same question of our time and culture.  Almost ten years ago now I was a postulant, just beginning formation with the religious order I belong to now, the Congregation of St. Basil or Basilians. I am originally from here in Edmonton, and the first place to which I was appointed by the Basilians was Cali, Colombia, to teach high school French and English. An article at the time written in a religious newspaper or magazine reflected on the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience that we in religious orders both of men and women take. Let me say, on this note, that poverty, chastity, and obedience are not only vows that set men and women of religious orders apart from the rest of us. These are standards by which we are all called to live by our Baptism and any specific vocation that flows from Baptism: Religious life, priesthood, single life, married life, and so on. Poverty, chastity, and obedience are called “evangelical counsels”; they are essential standards for all of us to live by. They are somewhat like commandments.

The article, as I remember, said that in more wealthy parts of the world, poverty is the most difficult of the evangelical counsels to live by, and obedience is the least difficult. In less wealthy regions, as in my experience in Colombia, poverty is the easiest of the counsels to live by. I do not mean this, and neither did the article, simply because regions like these have less material wealth, although might less wealth allow us to live with greater gratitude and take less for granted? And, at the same time, there tends to be a greater focus in wealthier regions on social and moral order, and so obedience.

Each of us; each culture and region of the world has its commandments; its social and moral standards that are more or less difficult than others to keep. Let me suggest that, hearing the Ten Commandments from Exodus, our prayer today might be one of thanksgiving to God for the commandments we find easier to keep, and for help with those we find more difficult. In this way, in the words of our Psalm, we might more and more hold God’s commands in reverence, as “words of everlasting life.”