“Maximizing the Minimum”
Father Peter Fitzgibbons
February 11 – 12, 2023
Gospel: Matthew 5:17-37
I have known you all for a long time, and I am willing to bet that I could ask anyone in this congregation to stand and recite all Ten Commandments. I believe you could do that. However, memorizing them is easy but keeping them is quite another matter. The Ten Commandments are like the “I will obeys.” But they are more than just ten sentences. As our Lord tells us in the Gospels, they go a little deeper than that. If you look at the Baltimore Catechism which is the one I used growing up in Catholic school, the Commandments are more than “Thou shall not” do this and “Thou shall not” do that. Our Lord expanded on this in the Gospels. There are things you shouldn’t do but there are also things you should do. We use the Commandments as a yardstick to measure our sanctity and how close we are drawing to our Lord. And that’s a very good beginning. But it’s not the end in the walk of sanctity.
Ash Wednesday is next week. If you say, “I’m going to eat better,” well eating better is not a penance . . . except for me, but anyway. It’s actually part of the Fifth Commandment. If something is covered by a Commandment, it’s not a penance. Sometimes we think those are the standards we have to live by. A priest who I’m familiar with said, “I said the Divine Office and also the Rosary. Oh my God, I’ve done so much!” Really Father? You need a break and a raise! Come down from the cross, Father; we need the wood. Priests have been given much and therefore are responsible for more. You’ve done what you were supposed to do. “Father, I’ve been a good Catholic – I haven’t robbed a bank.” You are not supposed to! I didn’t see that anywhere in the Commandments! We tend to maximize the minimum. We say, “Hey, I’m a good person.” By the way, that statement is not found in Scripture. “I keep the Commandments.” What does scripture tell us? Saint Luke’s Gospel, Chapter 17, Verse 10 says: “I am a useless servant. I have only done what I’ve been told to do.” We are no better than the servants because we’ve done only what we’ve been told to do.
This is not to denigrate the Commandments. The Commandments are good because they are directions from our Lord. They teach us how to love. They are like the New Jersey barriers on the highway. Jesus said that they are not works of justice. People get upset and say, “Oh, the Commandments are about judgement!” No, they’re not. What’s wrong with you? What have you done? When people start yelling at the Church, I always wonder what they have done. If you’ve done something really wrong and your conscience is hurting, come see me. I can fix that. Keeping the Commandments are works of love. That’s what our Lord said: “If you love Me, keep my Commandments.” Don’t rewrite them. And don’t say they need to be updated. “Keep My Commandments through works of love. Renounce your very self and follow Me in whatever way I need you, in whatever vocation I need you, in whatever path I need you, and in whatever cross I ask you to carry. Resign yourself to My will and become with Me a co-redeemer for the salvation of souls”.
Our Lord said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” There are more than ten by the way. They not only teach us but help us to prepare our souls to go further in God’s love. Remember our Lord and the rich young man? He approached the Lord and asked, “Lord, what must I do to inherit everlasting life?” Our Lord said, “Keep My Commandments.” The young man said, “I have kept Commandments since my youth.” And our Lord looked at him with great love and said, “Sell everything you have or give it to the poor and follow Me.” The young man went away saddened because he had many possessions. The greatest possession he had and was unwilling to give was himself.
That’s what the Commandments train us to do. They ask us to renounce ourselves. So that, as Saint Paul says, “we can become co-redemptorists for the salvation of souls.” To accept from His hand, lovingly and not always happily, whatever vocation He has asked to us to do in a time or place. To accept any cross He asks us to carry for ourselves or those others have imposed upon us. To be like Him for the salvation of souls. This is what the Commandments train us to do. The works of love He asks us to do lead us to the renunciation of self. “You know better what is good for my salvation, the salvation of those I love, and the salvation of the world, so I resign myself to You.” When you resign yourself to the good Lord, a couple of things are important to know. First, you don’t have to understand everything. Who knows the mind of the Lord or His counsellor? We don’t know. And the most important part for us because of our fallen intellect and will is that we don’t have to like it. When I was sick that month with Covid, I tried to come over to the church to walk while saying my prayers. That didn’t work out so well. I may have made it around the church once or twice and decided to sit down for a while. I felt worse than I looked. When I finally went back to work at the VA, one of the nurses in hospice said, “Father, you don’t look good.” You ought to be inside! Some friends of mine wouldn’t bring the drug cart down when I needed it. Come on! I’m hurting here! Did I like the suffering I was going through? No. Did I enjoy it? No. Did anyone around me enjoy it? Heck no! I was only spreading the joy. Did I accept it for the suffering of souls? Yes. I offered it up to Christ for my sins and for the salvation of souls. I did not like it but it was necessary. It was a good lesson in the virtue of humility.
Keeping the Commandments is only the first phase of love, but they lead us to the last one which is renunciation of self. Know what the hardest thing to do in the religious life of priests? “The vow of poverty?” No, not really. That’s nothing. It is doing the will of another rather than your own. The hardest vow I took at ordination is obedience. And that’s true not only for me but for all of us. Anyone who has been in the service will tell you that we put people through arduous tasks. “I cannot do it First Sergeant!” You will with proper boot therapy. Boot or Kiwi therapy is a great motivator. We know you can do it. Our doctors are not stupid. You don’t want to do it. We are just checking your heart.
The only thing hard about the spiritual life is what sits on top of our shoulders. It’s the greatest source for temptation. Our Lord does not give us impossible tasks. He checks our hearts for how much we love Him. That’s what He asks: ”How much do you love Me?” Say to any hero or heroine, “You did great!” And they will say, “No. I’m just one of the herd. This is what I do.” They do it out of love. That is what our Lord is asking from us. Keep the Commandments. Keep these works of love. They are guides and training aids so that we may come to fuller and greater love, renounce ourselves, and accept our crosses and our ordinations. They help us become what we were meant to become . . . co-redeemers with Christ. And when God asks us to do something, if we love Him we will say, “Whatever Your will Lord. Let Your will be done rather than mine.”
Father’s Reflections . . .
A part of my past life comes back to haunt me from time to time. When you are listening to newscasters and so-called experts about international events like our latest balloon festival…I don’t believe them. The military commentators should begin with “Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away.” I went to the same charm school as the military commentators. They tell you nothing because they can’t. Everything they would tell you is classified, and classifications have at least a 50-year life span. So, everything you hear is basically fertilizer. They aren’t telling you anything that’s not public knowledge.
How will you apply this message to your life? ________________________________________
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