Download Morality - st. anthony of padua

Morality
Making good decisions!
1. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name Father, by our Baptism you have
made us sons and daughters. We are privileged to call you Father. Like our earthly
fathers, you desire our ultimate fulfillment of joy with you in heaven. Father, thank you
for giving us the grace to get there. Lord, help us know your presence in our life. Show us
the areas that don’t bring you glory. Help us open our hearts to you and
your plan for our lives.
2. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
Father, so many times we try and live our lives like we want to. We do not seek your will
before our own. Lord, we surrender control of our lives to you. We trust that your plan
and will is better than ours. Only your plan will lead us to the ultimate joy and fulfillment
you have waiting for us in heaven. Help us live out your plan on earth.
3. Give us this day our daily bread Father, you call us to the table where we receive our
strength and life in your body and blood. As we walk this journey and abide by your
laws, especially the moral law, nurture us with your very life. Lord, you have told us that
all who eat of your body and drink of your blood will have life within them. Lord, we beg
for your life in our lives.
4. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Father, we acknowledge that we are sinners. We put ourselves and our desires before
you. We turn our backs on you and separate our hearts from you because of our
sinfulness. Lord, we pray that you would pour your mercy and grace over us. Help us
to change the areas of our lives that cause us to sin. We can be free from those areas if
we choose you.
We also acknowledge that we have hurt others by our words and actions. By not choosing
your moral law, we not only offend you, but hurt those we use for our own gain and
pleasure. Grant us the humility we need to ask those we’ve hurt for forgiveness and help
us forgive those who by their words and actions have hurt us. Father, by your wounds,
and your grace and mercy, we are healed.
5. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
Father, this journey can sometimes be full of temptation and suffering. We get
discouraged and want to give up. Lord, we pray that you would surround us first with
your spirit to lead and illuminate our path. We pray that you would protect us with all
your angels from the works of the devil. We claim our lives for you. We ask all the saints
who have walked this faith journey before us to pray for us. Father, you desire our
freedom and ultimate happiness and joy. We accept your mission and abide by your plan
and will. Jesus we love you and we trust in you. AMEN
God’s plan is that we should know ultimate joy. This joy is not immediate. It is the joy of
being a part of the Kingdom of God. In God’s Kingdom, the moral law is not just a set of
rules to make us miserable but a path to find the fullness of joy starting on earth and
fulfilled in heaven.
For too many people, the Catholic Church and its teachings on morality come down to a
lot of “no” statements. “Thou shalt not” seems to be the way that most people look at
morality. There is this incredible list of things that I am not supposed to do, and if I do
them I’m going to be punished for all eternity. It’s no wonder that we rebel against the
idea!
It would be helpful as we start the semester on morality, if we start to look at morality as
a type of drama. Our life is not just something that we need to live and obey the strict
rules that will make us unhappy. Our life is something that should be lived well, and
despite the temptations for the quick and easy fix of happiness, we should follow the
owner’s manual that will lead us to true joy. Morality is not just a list of things that are
wrong; it is really a path to the human heart, a path to happiness, a path to joy, a path to
God.
In order to understand what morality is, we have to understand where we came from.
Since we were created in the image of God, we have to understand that God
desires for us to share in his eternal love and happiness in heaven.
We all have the desire to be united with God within our hearts. When we look back in
history we see that man has always desired God. Man may have been slightly
misguided in his efforts because he did not understand what it was that he worshiped or
desired, but in the end mankind has always longed to be understood and to
understand its creator.
Now, since we were created by God, God has given us a manual to live by. We do not
always live by this manual concept, it is quite silly. It is as if a statue suddenly said to
its sculptor, “I no longer want to stand in this position, I am going to walk away.”
Mankind rebelled against the creator of the known universe. I don’t know about you, but
God would be the last person I want to rebel against. Mankind closed itself off from the
happiness of heaven. God does not want us to be kept from heaven forever so He made
the promise that He would find a way to fix the problem of sin. Guess who the solution
is? Jesus Christ.
Why do we need these rules? Wouldn’t it be better if God just created us with the ability
to love him? Then we wouldn’t have the problem of sin. Then Jesus wouldn’t have had to
be crucified. It seems like God created His own problem.
This reasoning is our own limited human way of thinking. Think about your own life. Do
you want someone who has no choice but to love you? Or do you want someone
who has chosen to love you? You want someone to choose you for who you are. God
wants the same thing.
He doesn’t want us to simply love Him because we do not have a choice. He wants us to
love Him because we have a choice.
This is where our dignity lies. We are given human souls endowed with an intellect and
free will. If we think of it like a ship, our desire is like the wind pushing us in one
direction or another. Our intellect is like the navigator who has a map and knows which
direction the ship should go in. Sometimes we are supposed to go in the direction of
the wind, and sometimes against the wind. Free will is like the captain because in the end
we can choose to go with the wind, or the navigator.
In the best situations the “wind” and the “navigator” agree and we have no problem with
morality or what the Church teaches. It is when the “wind” and the “navigator”
disagree that we suddenly get the idea that morality is oppressive and makes us
miserable.
God, who created and rules the universe, desires our happiness. He has placed that desire
in our hearts. It is good to just simply trust our navigator who has been given a map by
God. Because God desires the same thing we do.
This idea that God has given eternal laws of the universe that human beings must obey is
known as “Eternal Law.”
“Divine Providence” is exactly what it sounds like. God providing for his people. God
desires and expects for us to use our free will to help bring about His plan for our
divine joy and happiness. However, even when human beings decide to go against God,
God still decides to protect us, to help us, and to provide for us. God gives us the desire
“to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13)
Even civilizations that are not “Christian” have evidence of the “Natural Moral Law.”
This is the law that God has written on the human heart, which allows mankind to
know that something is right or wrong.
Think about it this way – you know when something is unfair: someone cuts in front of
you in line, someone takes something that is not theirs, someone hits another person
for no reason. Whenever this happens, we very rarely find the other person arguing that
the action is right. They simply give us reasons why they did that particular action
to make it appear justified. You will never really hear someone say that cutting in line is
OK, or that stealing is OK, or that it is all right for people committing violence.
This natural law can be found in all cultures; it is the basis for moral rules and civil law in
all societies. You’ll never see a society preach that hatred is better than love, that
selfishness is better than noble sacrifice for the good of others or that constant warfare
and bloodshed is preferable to peace. Because we know that these things are “good” or
“better” than the alternative, we must have been created in a way that makes these rules
obvious.
If we continue our analogy of a ship, the natural moral law is our compass that points us
in the direction we must go.
Not everything can be known simply with our own heads and in our own hearts. Some
things need to be told to us, the navigator needs to get his map from the mapmaker.
The 10 Commandments are the foundation of moral law.
These teachings were revealed to the nation of Israel under the old covenant as they
prepared to become the people that would bring forth the Messiah.
In the 10 Commandments God seems to be saying, “if you are going to be my people
when you are going to walk with me, then you need to know the basics about what
it means to be human, what you need to be happy, what you need to be my people.” God
begins to give us the outline of the map so that we can navigate the seas of life.
The 10 Commandments are intertwined, woven together so that if we find ourselves
struggling to keep one of the commandments it impacts our ability to keep all of the
commandments. If there is one thing to remember about the commandments, and in fact
all of morality, then it is this, the answer given by Christ to the question, “what is the
greatest of the commandments?”
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it,
you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the
law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-39)
It seems the path to happiness is quite simple, but we know from experience that it
is not easy.