 the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit. So to be told to you in grace, I was praying and reflecting on what our series should be for let, our homely series. I had some ideas. One idea came to mind. I said, no, no, no, no, no. I had other ideas. And that same idea came back. I thought, no, no, no, no, no, no. It was too elementary. I said, no, no, no. I'd rather do something else. The idea came back. And finally, in biblical obedience, I said, speak, Lord, your servant is listening. And God said, I want you to focus on the Ten Commandments. So length this year here at Our Lady of Grace, we're going to focus on the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments given to us by God our Father. Now it's important that we look at these Ten Commandments. Honestly, I would prefer to maybe do something else. And they are elementary. In fact, I pray that most of us learn these as children. But oftentimes it's important to read learn them as adults because there are applications that maybe weren't emphasized when we were children. And truth be told, there are many Christians who could not even list the Ten Commandments if they were asked. And regrettably, even more so, there are many Christians who are not even attempting to live by the Ten Commandments. So perhaps this length as we assess our discipleship, it might be helpful for us to walk through the Ten Commandments. So let's look at these Ten Commandments. First of all, we know that our fallen nature, we know that we cannot figure out right and wrong on our own. We're too fallen. We need the help of God's grace. So God's commandments come and they guide us in the way in which we are called to live, as human beings, as the children of God. There are some who approach the commandments and say, but it represses my freedom. Quite the opposite. When the commandments are lived well, they actually help us to order our passions and our emotions so that we can actually be more free. We can understand how we are called to live as the children of God. You can imagine if that argument were to be made that rules repress us. Imagine if that were to be applied to our traffic laws. We shouldn't have traffic laws, they're too repressive. Imagine the chaos and the disaster that would ensue. No, our traffic laws are very important. They tell us where our lane is. They help us to get where we need to go. They help us to communicate with one another. In similar fashion, but of a much higher order, the moral law of God helps us to stay in our lane, to stay focused on where we're going, and to make sure that we communicate with one another and play our part in God's covenant. So the commandments are essential to the Christian way of life. And traditionally we would say that there are two tablets of the commandments. The first tablet pertains to the relationship we have with God. That entails the first three commandments. God's sovereignty, God's holy name, and God's Sabbath, the first tablet. Our relationship with God. The second tablet pertains to our relationship with one another, with our neighbor. The following seven commandments to honor our father and mother, to make sure that we don't kill. We do not commit adultery. We do not steal. We do not bear false witness. We don't covet our neighbor's wife. We don't covet our neighbor's goods. The seventh commandment relating to our relationship with our neighbor, with one another. These two tablets form the entirety of God's moral law. Everything else flows from these 10 commandments. And we have to understand that. Understand this movement between the two tablets. At some point I pray that here at Our Lady of Grace we can continue to go even farther into the spiritual life. Because I would like to say to you that the entire 10 commandments by our early tradition was the entire backdrop of the Lord's Prayer. Jesus relied on the knowledge of the 10 commandments as he taught us his prayer. And that's what I would love to talk about. But truth be told, we're not there yet. Because if I were to try to teach the 10 commandments based on the Lord's Prayer, if we don't know the 10 commandments you couldn't understand, and that's what I want us to point to. That's what I want eventually for us to be able to get to as a community. And I say that not to belittle anyone, but rather to point to the glory and to glory that's available to us in our spiritual tradition. That's where I want us to be able to get to. The truth be told is we have to review the basics. Make sure that this foundation is solid before we build upon it. So let's go back to these commandments, that first tablet. Let's go to the first commandment. The first commandment is clear. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. You shall love God with everything that you are, every ounce of your existence, and every moment of your being. You should love God and pour out yourself in selfless service of that love. That was a radical way of life in the ancient world. God's chosen people were considered oddballs then and now. In the ancient world, they were considered odd because they acknowledged that there was only one God. Their God was the one God, and they sought solely to love him. The pagans among God's chosen people said, oh, come on, there are other gods. How can you be so narrow-minded? Why don't you spread the love a little? Give it to the multiple gods. But God's people were called to fidelity to the one living and true God. They were considered oddballs in the ancient world. God's chosen people are considered oddballs in the contemporary world. We may not have to worry about Zeus, or Apollo, or Malach, or all the ancient mythological gods, but today we have to worry about other gods. Respectability, vanity, power, prestige, sports, entertainment, leisure, these are the gods that are so worshiped in our culture today that even the commandment of God, the first to love God with all that we are, is oftentimes eclipsed. And the world looks at us again as the oddballs. Come on, don't be fanatical. You can miss mass, it's okay. It's all right for you to talk like this. You don't have to fulfill this promise. Come on, just dump her, divorce her, move on with your life. We compromise everything. Contemporary world compromises everything. And we Christians, the God's chosen people, are once again the oddballs because we seek with all our hearts, all our minds, all our souls to love God. God has revealed himself to us and he has revealed his love and his moral law to his children, to each of us. So as the world spins, I cannot tell right from wrong, it is clear for us how we are called to live as the psalmist cries out and sings, your law, oh Lord, is a lamp unto my feet. That's how we see the law of God, a light in the midst of the darkness that points us the way to our father's house. Our vocation in this life is to obey the law of God and to manifest God's goodness precisely by our obedience. The world looks at us. Who are those people? One God, so narrow-minded, so arrogant. One God, their moral code is above all others. The narrow-mindedness, the hubris the world tells us. But when we show mercy, when the world all knows only judgment, and when we show kindness, even to those who are unkind to us, when we live the law of God, the world is confounded. It doesn't understand, what is this? And it's precisely our way of life that lends credibility to our claim of one God. And you need to understand that, dear children of God, it is our way of life that will give credibility or lessen credibility to our claim of one God. Our entire life, our vocation, our calling in this life is to fulfill the law of God and to praise Him with all that we have, to love Him with all that we have. Years ago, when I was a seminarian in Rome, one of my professors became an endeared mentor and he was hosting some Jewish scholars on one occasion and he had meetings all throughout the day. He was supposed to join them for dinner. He wasn't able to make it due to a conflict. He called and said, could you go? I thought, well, I get to have dinner with two Jewish scholars. When do you ever get to do that? So I said happily. So I went and it was a husband and wife. They were both scholars of the Jewish law. We sat at one of these small Italian restaurants. And as I sat down, they said, asked if I would mind if they were to pray the traditional Jewish prayer before meals. I said, no, we have something like that. I had no idea what I just said yes to. I didn't know it was sung. I didn't know how long it was. So there we are in the middle of this restaurant. They start chanting this long Jewish prayer. It's in Hebrew. I didn't know what they were saying. And truth be told, the first I was embarrassed. I said, everybody watching, what are they doing? What are people going to think? And eventually I got out of myself. And while I could not understand the language, I just listened and it was powerful and a beautiful prayer. Again, I didn't know the words, but there was some power in that prayer and I was able to share in that prayer. In the course of our meal, I remember asking them on one occasion, why is Israel still here? The Israelites. St. Paul sought to answer this question throughout his entire letter to the Romans. Why is Israel still here when the Messiah has come? They took me to an even deeper question in true rabbinic fashion. Why was Israel ever here? And their answer was simple. Israel exists solely to praise and honor God. It's powerful. You might be aware that Jewish theology does not have a developed concept of the afterlife. And for the Jewish scholar, they would say, if we live and we praise God and we praise and adore him, throughout our lives and at the end, if he blesses us with his presence, thanks be to God. If he returns to the earth and simply fade away, then thanks be to God because we live, Israel dwells and exists in order to praise and glorify God. That's powerful. That's a reflection of that first commandment. To love God with all that you are. Israel's highest prayer, the shema. Here, oh Israel, remember, the Lord your God is Lord alone. Now, dear friends, we in Christ know that there is an afterlife, that the Lord has risen from the dead and that he awaits us in paradise and that promise has been given to us, which means we Christians should even more so and more vehemently and more zealously live this commandment to love God with all that we are. If one were to ask us, why do you exist? I exist. The new Israel, the Roman Catholic Church exists for the praise and the glory of God. That should be the mark of our lives. Of all that we do, all that we don't do, to seek to love him with everything we have. Our moral life flows from our faith in God. And that first commandment summarizes both the faith and the obedience that we are called to have in God. Saint Paul summarizes this beautifully in the New Testament, when he speaks about the obedience of faith. Do you realize, dear friends, that we are called to obey God? But we can only obey the one that we love and we can only love what we know. That's why we are called to know God, to love God, so that we can then obey him and give him even greater love and deeper love and more passionate love in order to follow his moral law. And to be faithful to his covenant. But the first commandment requires us to nourish and protect our faith and to avoid anything that would harm that faith. It requires us to be prudent and vigilant to understand that we live in a dark age, a secular age, that seeks to dismiss God-revealed religion or any reference to the supernatural. And that is the gas we breathe. If we are not careful, those fallen views can get into our heart. If those views are in our heart, we cannot love God with all our heart. So we must be vigilant. The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives us some things to be attentive to, to watch out for, to name if we find them within our souls. The church speaks of voluntary doubt. How many Christians allow voluntary doubt to sit on their minds and hearts? You cannot love God with all your mind when you allow a doubt into that mind. Any question you have about the faith has an answer. If you have a question or a concern or a doubt, you should ask for guidance. Turn to prayer, study the scriptures, study the Catechism of the Catholic Church and seek guidance. Because doubt on the mind takes over. And eventually you will find doubt leading you very quickly into a denial even of the existence of God. Voluntary doubt is heaven real. Is Jesus really present in the Eucharist? Does God really care about us? Should I really care about all of this religious stuff? And the doubts can go on. We must name them and we must allow them to be healed. And then there's involuntary doubt. We are fallen, never be surprised by the things that pass through our fallen minds. Involuntary doubt, they can come and they should be allowed to go. But oftentimes involuntary doubts are kept. And they very quickly can become voluntary doubts. So if we find things passing through our minds, let them pass, let them go. The Catechism also identifies despair as an offense to the First Commandment. Despair is when we say we are completely unlovable, nothing has meaning, nothing has purpose, and we allow ourselves to live in darkness. That is a rejection of the First Commandment because we are the children of God, well beloved, and we are called to reciprocate his love. Well, if we allow ourselves to sit in the darkness of despair, we cannot love. The Church also identifies in gratitude. Do you realize that all the good we do is because of the grace of God? We are too fallen, we cannot do a good deed without the help of God's grace. Every good deed that's attempted without God's grace eventually becomes adulterated in self-interest. We can only do good deeds by the grace of God, which means every good thing that happens, we are called by the First Commandment to show gratitude, thanksgiving, to God. And yet so often times gratitude is lacking. The Saints tell us that gratitude is the rarest flower in the garden of virtues. When we are ungrateful, we are offending the First Commandment. And then there is the sin of presumption. Presumption's so powerful, it actually has two expressions. The first is when we think that we are greater than what we are. We think everything we have is because of us. I work hard for this, I earn this. There's a lot of eyes in there. In fact, so many eyes, there's no room for God. When we presume on our own strength, as if it is not a gift from God, and we presume that we can live a good life without God, there are too many Christians who approach their faith as if it's some type of hobby rather than the very air that we need. In order to allow our spiritual lives to breathe. Presumption also has another expression. When we presume on the mercy of God, and we commit even major sin, because we know God will forgive us, it's the total affront to love, to complete denial of the First Commandment. Imagine if I were to say of a good friend, I know that friend will forgive me if I punch him in the nose. As I go over, I punch him in the nose, and as a good friend, he forgives me. You should not question his friendship, but you should certainly question mine. To presume in such a fashion kills love. And those who presume in God's mercy in order to commit grave sin have killed the love of God in their own hearts. The Catechism goes on to describe many other things. Indifference, to just not care. Do you know how many Catholics this applies to? To just not care. To not care about your relationship with God, to not care about your discipleship, to just not care. And so oftentimes you find that among the faithful. But we are called by the First Commandment to care, to give God all that we have. The Catechism also describes the very serious sin of lukewarmness, which flows from indifference. Pope Saint John Paul II said that lukewarmness has covered the entire body of Christ. And the problem with the lukewarmness, they think they're good Catholics. I'm a good Catholic, I go to Mass every Sunday, most Sundays. When was the last time I went to confession? Well, it's been a couple of years, but no. Do you pray every day? Well, a lot of times. When was the last time you read the Bible? Or served the poor? Or forgave your enemy? Or died to yourself solely because in some way you wanted to serve God? And suddenly we start to find a lot of knows, knows, knows. And eventually you have to ask, in what world or in whose mind do you think that you are a good Catholic? Lukewarmness has taken over the church. And the zeal of faith, the dynamism that should exist within the heart of the believer, for the love of God has been severely suppressed. And that is a grave sin against the First Commandment. Because we are to love, love God with all that we are. And to constantly look for ways in which we can love him more, or more creatively, or more deeply. True love has no room for lukewarmness. What about spiritual sloth? Now this one is the one that oftentimes gets misdefined. Spiritual sloth is not simply laziness. It can include that. But spiritual sloth is when we get involved in so much activism, so many activities, so many things that our soul is tired, our heart is tired, and cannot fulfill the spiritual duties of the virtue of religion. The person who works too much throughout the week and cannot get up on Sunday morning to worship God. The person who is overly involved in activism throughout the day and in the evening, their heart is too tired in order to pray. That's spiritual sloth, to so exhaust our heart of its energies that we cannot even perform the religion, the duties of religion. And yet we see that a lot. A sign again of the struggles we have with the First Commandment. Because we are called to have the energy and the dynamism of love. And if we allow spiritual sloth into our hearts, it cannot perform those acts of love. Then there's hatred of God. There are some people who absolutely hate God. We can see that in our culture. I just have to wear my Roman collar out in public and I find very quickly who hates God. But then there's another version of that. There are some perhaps even among us today who hate God. And they hate God so much that they come into his house. They perform worship to him to show him how much they hate him. Because they come and they do not believe him, they do not trust him, they do not obey him. They are here in open defiance against him because they hate him. It's a deceptive hatred. But it's one found in the hearts of some. And then there are some other areas of the First Commandment that are described in the Catechism and the Catholic Church. Promises and vows. Vows are pretty obvious. If you tell God that you're gonna stay with this person for your whole life, God expects you to stay with that person for your whole life. Promises are below vows. If you promise something, God expects you to do it. And this is why the Lord warns us to be cautious about making promises. Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no. But if a promise is made, it must be fulfilled. If you call on God to witness a promise and you willfully break that promise, then you have asked God to witness a lie. And that is sacrilege. Grave sacrilege. Promises and vows must be fulfilled. Then there's superstition. This is when we think that something in the created world has power, which it doesn't have. All spiritual power in heaven and on earth comes only, only from God. And yet sometimes people think, well, I have to have this, it's lucky. You know, lucky is actually a pagan God. It makes it, it's lucky. I need this in order to be successful. When I was growing up, we had the rabbits foot. You remember those things? And I wish that those had been phased out because we Christians argued against them. But it wasn't us. It was the animal rights groups. They had more zeal than we did. I wish we were as committed to our message as they are to theirs. And then there's idolatry. Dear friends, if you have a statue of Buddha in your home, get it out. If you have indications of Hindu worship or Native American worship or worship of anything other than the true God, get it out of your home. It does not belong there. Someone can say, oh, come on, Father. That was just something I went on a trip. I got that. It doesn't mean anything. Good. If it doesn't mean anything, get it out of your home because it may not mean much to you. But it means a lot to God. Because if you're hard in your home, you claim or consecrate it to the living and true God, then idols have no room, no place. And then there's divination and magic. This has become very popular, regrettably even among our young. Do you know that right now, tarot cards and Ouija boards are sold as board games in major department stores? And the young use them as if there are some plaything. And oftentimes, adults will dismiss them. Oh, it doesn't mean anything. Yes, it actually means a lot. That actually has a spiritual power whether you acknowledge it or not. And again, people will say, oh, come on, it's not a big deal. Have you read the scriptures? It's a big deal to God. He does not want his people dealing in such things. I remember years ago, traveling to New Orleans with some priest friends, one of whom was a trained exorcist and rather scandalously right in front of the cathedral in New Orleans are all the palm readers. They get a lot of good business from the Catholics. And as we were walking, this priest's exorcist was exercising each of the palm readers. He wouldn't look at them. He was exercising one after the other after the other. Then he exercised this one stand and one of the other priests said, hey, what are you doing? He said, I'm exercising this divination. Another priest said, no, you just exercised ice cream, man. Right? He was in that row of people. We should not dismiss or think that divination or magic is not important. In fact, read the scriptures, dear friends, some of God's most severe punishments toward his people were oftentimes the keeping of a few necklaces of pagan gods. How would you feel if tomorrow morning your spouse were to wake up and around his neck or her neck, they had an image of a former girlfriend or boyfriend? And they simply wore that. And even the most secure of spouses would be shocked because it would seem to indicate that something in your spouse's heart still belongs to this person when their whole heart should belong to you. This is what an idol does. This is what magic and divination does to our relationship with God and what we are saying about our own hearts. And God loves us with all that he has and he calls us to respond and to love him back. We do not need to play with the things of this world. We have a loving father who cares for us, who knows every hair on our head. We don't have to worry about manipulating the things of this world in order to somehow be lucky. But we can instead rely on the love and the confidence and the care that our father has for us. I have to mention air religion, since Satanism and the occult are on the rise. I see now it's especially popular and entertainment on television. You should not watch such garbage. Do not let such things in your home or in your heart. We have to be careful about tempting God. Today on this Sunday of Lent we recount the Lord in the desert and the Lord will not tempt God the Father. We should also avoid tempting him. We should avoid sacrilege which is when we offend a sacred thing. We should avoid simony. When we seek to buy sacred things or to control the church with our money. Some of you need to hear that lesson. Every time you don't get what you want you throw the amount of your tithe in the face of the church. That's simony. It's a great violation of the first commandment. You didn't give it to the church or to me. You gave it to God. And we give to God completely. No strings attached. We have to be careful of atheism and agnosticism. The willful denial or the willful doubt of the existence of God. Dear friends, what I've just given you is a summary. You can read more in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. To understand how we are called to live and obedient to the first commandment to be able to say with all of our hearts I exist for the praise and glory of God. And to allow the Shema, hero, Israel, the Lord your God is Lord alone to echo in our own hearts and in our actions and to give a sober examination of our conscience. If you have found that you have been guilty of some of these or an accomplice to some of these or have permitted some of these in your home then confess your sins before God and seek once again to recommit yourself, your entire heart, your whole being and your family to God. This is the work of Lent. And if Lent doesn't hurt a little bit or a lot then we're not doing it right. So dear friends, we're gonna continue to walk through the Ten Commandments during this Latin season. Again, this is being done so that we might know right and we might know wrong. We might know how we are called to live as the children of God and that by being obedient to our loving Father we might truly be free to understand what it means to have the dignity of a child of God and to receive the joy and the hope that he desires to get to each of us. As we celebrate this Eucharist, once again I encourage you to commit your entire self, your whole heart, your whole soul, all your strength to the living God and to him alone.