Imagine this scenario: It is eleven o’clock pm. You come to a traffic light that turns red, so you stop. As you are sitting at the light, you see to your right, a gang of teens pounding on one person. He is screaming for help and you see one just pounding on the victim who is laying on the ground, his arms and legs flailing as he calls for help. The others are egging him on.

The light turns green, you drive off as normal and drive home. You enter your house, go to the refrigerator, grab a beer and sit down in front of the tv set to watch your favorite late night talk show. You open the beer, sit back in the chair and catch the beginning of the program as you take your first swig.

From a legal stand-point, you did nothing illegal, therefore, you did nothing wrong. From a moral standpoint, can the same be said? Afterall, you could have called the police, especially if you had a cellphone, you could have created a distraction or, if you are really daring, and no one would recommend this, you could have intervened into the fight. You did none of this and none of it was required by law.

This conundrum of whether you did all that you should have, is the issue in today’s second reading.

The actual focus of the reading is the difference between living the Jewish law and the Christian concept of living the law.

St. Paul is writing to the Galatians who were listening to some itinerant preachers teaching them that they must follow the Jewish laws in order to be saved. This issue was the first the Church addressed and was an intense one for the early Christians. Men called Judaizers would preach to the Christians that they were required to follow all 613 of the Jewish laws from eating kosher meals to circumcision. Paul explains in various parts of the New Testament that if you do that you lose the benefit of Christ. Your trust is in your own efforts to follow the laws and not in the grace earned for you by the action of Christ on the cross. Further, If you seek your salvation in following laws then your only recourse is to follow the laws perfectly, if you cannot do that you cannot be saved. So, Paul warned the Galatians that they must reject any notion from these preachers and they are  to trust only in the grace of God through Jesus’ action on the cross.

St. John Chrysostom, one of greatest preachers in Christianity, teaches that the more you trust in following laws, the less you trust grace. So you have this balance that works both ways. Jesus death and resurrection lead us to trust his grace for our salvation. However, it goes further. The law is a basic standard, but since our faith is a relationship with Christ, it is the relationship and no longer the law that feeds our devotion and wisdom.

We no longer have to concern ourselves with following the Jewish law, but we do have to concern ourselves with doing the two great commandments Love the Lord your God with all your Heart, Soul, Mind and Strength and Love Your Neighbor as Yourself. This means that your behavior has to meet a higher standard of the action of love than just following the law.

This was the reason for my first example. The standard of following the law was met: you stopped at the stop light and then went when it was green; but that of doing the loving thing was not. The standard of love is not tied to the law, but it is a standard that calls  us to a new level of existence and  it is a greater challenge.

That standard requires a relationship to inform our decisions. For without that relationship we may think we are making the right decisions, but we are making wrong ones.

For Americans this is a real issue and we are living that issue. That is why, coincidentally, this second reading is a great one to read this week, the week we celebrate American Independence.

The connection between living the law and living the requirement to love in our faith is one that we as Americans need to know.

In the mid-eighteenth century, a Frenchman by the name of Alexis de Tocqueville, studied this American experiment and wrote a book about it called Democracy in America. In his study, he found that there was a huge flaw in our system. The flaw was that our country could easily fall into tyranny by our system of making laws. The remedy he saw was in the importance of religion in America, which France did not emphasize after the revolution. The reality of Christianity which is based on living in a way of love that pleases God, was the counter-balance almost by accident for this flaw in our system. However, he saw that religion was like the tent pole of our system. Take religion away and the whole system collapses into tyranny because of the flaw.

That is also a good understanding of the balance between law and faith. The stronger you seek to live God’s commandments, the less you need law in our society. The more you reject God’s commandments, the more you need law in our society.

If you want to change America, there are several ways to do it. Two are: Declare martial law and  force people to do your will, or lead people to reject their religion and then make use of the lawmaking process to force them to live in the way you want. The laws may contradict their religious roots, but since you taught them true freedom is found in rejecting God, they will  embrace your tyranny happily because they believe you. It is the latter that is the strategy being done by people trying to change America now and in light of the protests in Brazil, may I warn the Brazilians that they must take heed of the importance of staying rooted in their faith. Monsignor Jonas is right,  prayer is the most important thing the Brazilians and those of us in the United States need right now.

Yet, we as Catholics have a choice, do we  follow our own faith that calls us to live the two commandments—the essential elements of our devotion or do we reject the basic teachings of our faith and seek instead to do the will of the new laws that have overtaken our country. The choice is ours, just as much as Paul gave the new Christians a choice, follow Christ or follow the ancient Jewish laws, but you cannot do both.

However, remember our faith calls us to love Christ and our neighbor, so our response must be rooted in our faith, our liturgy and our devotion so that we act in the way that is most loving even during a time when people are learning to reject everything Catholic.

The more quickly people reject Christ and embrace the law in this country, the more quickly the tent collapses. The more people, however, seek to embrace Christ, the more parts of that tent remain standing so that those who seek what Christ has to offer will find the true freedom that neither this or any country can offer: freedom in the Kingdom of God.

Remember as Catholics we have dual citizenship: in the United States and in Heaven. Our role is to embrace  what leads us to serve the Kingdom of Heaven in Christ first and by seeking that desire to be the loving members of our nation even if the tent collapses. We are, after all, ambassadors of the Kingdom of Heaven in our neighborhood here.

Choose to seek the grace that Christ offers us as the utmost endeavor and you will live at a higher standard than the law. This may put  you at times at odd with those seeking to change our country, but it will keep you in line with He who seeks to save as  many as possible from a world that cannot live in freedom without Him.

From here on in, we must seek to the do the will of God and treat others in  a way that God wants us to treat them, which can be seen in Romans 12. Even if people seek to do evil to us, we are to respond not with evil but with blessing (cf Romans 12). We must respond with a blessing with love and that can only be done when we are rooted  in Christ. That is doing the will of God and there is no law that can be made against this, but it is a behavior that is well in contrast to anything taught by those seeking to bring down the tent in this country by kicking out the tent poles of faith.

Hopefully, the next time you don’t just follow the law, but you act in love which is a higher standard and one that  would have responded to the man being beaten up on the side of the road as Jesus taught in Luke 10:25.

God bless you,

Fr. Robert J Carr

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