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christian morality
Covenant Morality
by Martin K. Barrack
© 1996 Martin K. Barrack
God's Covenant Family
A covenant is a sacred exchange of persons. In the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, a man literally gives himself, all that he is and all that he has, to his wife. She gives herself, all that she is and all that she has, to him. And the two become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24) In the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist, Christ gives each of us His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. We give Him our body, blood, soul and humanity. He abides in us, and we in Him (John 6:56).
Christ, for love of man came to earth, emptied Himself of the open manifestation of His Divinity to live a humble and exemplary life, die in excruciating pain on Calvary, and rise again to prove that He had truly redeemed us on the Cross. Our heavenly Father eternally sees Christ on the cross, and us beneath receiving Christ's Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, a gift so dazzling in its generosity that the early Christians called the Sacrament of His Body and Blood in Greek eucharistia, thanksgiving.
We give ourselves to Christ by preparing ourselves for heaven every moment of our lives, that we might remain part of His covenant family forever.
Preparing for Heaven
Our Lord solemnly commanded us: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest 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).
We can enter heaven only if we genuinely love God and want to be with Him forever. If Jesus came to us as He did to Zacchaeus and asked to move in, would we happily give Him our master bedroom and sleep on the guest bed? If He asked to stay for the rest of our earthly life, would we cheerfully say, "Lord, this house is Yours. You are the host, I the guest. Please allow me to remain in Your home always so I can sit and listen to whatever You teach me!" Or would we give Him an indifferent hour each Sunday morning and spend the rest of the week with others. St. Paul taught, "Star differs from star in glory. So it is with the resurrection of the dead" (1 Corinthians 15:41). Souls who on earth find radiant joy in Christ's presence will eternally find greater joy in heaven than those more moderate in their love.
Jesus will take into His Father's kingdom only souls happy to be with Him forever, so that heaven can remain a place of perfect harmony between our heavenly Father and His covenant family.
We can enter heaven only if we genuinely love one another. In heaven the happiness of each person is as great as the happiness of all the saints together because each delights as much in God's gifts to others as in his own. Here on earth, God patiently teaches us to love one another by giving each of us a different gift. One is good at farming, another at cooking. If the farmer shares his crop with the cook, there will be plenty of food. If the cook invites the farmer to eat what he has cooked, the farmer will be healthy and grow more food for them both with much left over. A third is a physician, skilled at healing, and a fourth a mechanic, skilled at machines. If the physician protects the farmer's health and the cook's health he too will have plenty of food. If the mechanic repairs the farmer's plow, the cook's oven, and the doctor's car, he will also have food and health. After the Fall, selfishness led men to barter and trade their gifts rather than giving freely.
We trade to reliably obtain food, clothing, and shelter. But once these basic needs are satisfied, God watches to see whether we freely share the gifts He gave us. Some of us say, "God's gifts to others add to my joy." Others say, "God's gifts to others make mine seem less by comparison." St. Paul also taught, "He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will reap bountifully." (2 Corinthians 9:6) Those who work diligently at loving all their brothers and sisters in God's covenant family will eternally find greater joy in heaven than those who work at it more moderately. Our heavenly Father will take only those who truly love all their covenant family, so that heaven will remain a place of perfect harmony.
God's covenant, or family relationship, was deeply rooted in our humanity during the Creation itself. In the beginning, "The earth was without form and void" (Genesis 1:2). Without form means the earth lacked structure. Void means it lacked population. God devoted three days to building the earth, separating heaven and earth, bringing forth dry land, and setting the greater and lesser lights in the sky. Then God devoted three days to populating the earth with fish and birds and beasts, and finally man. This is how a man provides a home for his family; first he builds a house, then he populates it.
Adam and Eve were created to live in earthly paradise forever as the first of God's covenant family. But when they willingly ended their special friendship with God through disobedience, He expelled them from Eden saying, "You are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). Ever since, God has patiently worked to prepare His covenant family for redemption and salvation. He told Noah, "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in His own image" (Genesis 9:6). God taught His covenant family not to be like Cain, the evil son of our first parents.
Centuries later, our patient Lord developed the covenant further with Abraham. "This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your descendants after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised" (Genesis 17:10). From that day forward God's Chosen People were specially marked in a way that no one else could see, but that God would know about, foreshadowing the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders, which invisibly mark the immortal souls of Christians. Abraham's descendants would have not only animals and plants for food, but also milk and honey from the land of Canaan.
Still more centuries later, our Lord saw that His people were prepared to receive the covenant in more detail. His Torah (Teachings in Hebrew) contained detailed instructions on how His people were to love Him and love one another. The paramount command, the heart and soul of Torah, was: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates" (Deuteronomy 6:5).
The awesome power of this command is expressed in God's words. "These words ... shall be upon your heart." They are to be written into our very heart and soul, so that God is in us at every moment of our lives. "You shall teach them diligently to your children." We are to teach our children from a very early age that God loves them, and that they are to love Him in return. "Talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise." It is not enough to love God quietly in our heart and to teach this quiet love to our children; we are to proclaim God all day every day. "You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand." It is not enough to proclaim God in words, we must proclaim Him in the work of our hands as well. "They shall be as frontlets between your eyes." We are to concentrate on God's words to the exclusion of all else. "You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." We should proclaim God's glory even to passing strangers. God gave us an example of how we are to know, love and serve Him by sending His Son to visit with us, to live a life focused constantly on His heavenly Father, to sacrifice His earthly life that God and man might be reconciled, and to nourish our souls with His own Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.
Our loving Father told Moses, "Behold, I make a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been wrought in all the earth or in any nation." (Exodus 34:10). But He added: "Observe what I command you this day."
Jesus fulfilled the old covenant on the Cross with His new and everlasting covenant, which calls us to love God and one another. The new and everlasting covenant is the pure distilled essence of the old: "On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22:40). Jesus told us that the new and everlasting covenant retains the moral law: "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished" (Matthew 5:17). Since heaven and earth will not pass away until the Second Coming, (Revelation 21:1) we God's covenant family can prepare for heaven by living Christ's new and everlasting covenant through His Father's Ten Commandments. In all Torah, only the Ten Commandments were "written with the finger of God" (Exodus 31:18, 34:28).
Love God
The first three commandments teach us how to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength.
The First Commandment: I am the Lord your God: you shall not have strange Gods before me.
God, who led His people from slavery in Egypt to the promised land, calls us first and foremost to accept and worship Him. We are to love Him above all else. Jesus said, "You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve" (Matthew 4:10).
"God created man in his own image" (Genesis 1:27). We are creatures of immortal spirit, briefly within mortal bodies. Through baptism we invite God the Holy Spirit to come and make our body His temple that we might live with Him. This we do in faith, hope, and charity. In faith, we believe in Him and bear witness to Him. In hope, we maintain a confident expectation of Divine blessing on earth and a beatific vision of God in the life to come as well as a healthy fear of offending His love and incurring punishment. In charity, we echo God's Divine charity toward us with our human charity toward His creatures.
We are to serve God only. We must proclaim Him our Creator and Savior, "Merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness," (Exodus 34:6) king of all that ever was or is or ever will be. We must serve Him in prayer, in which we lift our minds toward God to express our adoration, our contrition, our thanksgiving, and our supplications. We must unite ourselves with Christ to make our lives a sacrifice to our heavenly Father. We must keep the promises we make in the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Matrimony, and Penance. Bishops, priests, and deacons must also keep the solemn promises they make in the Sacrament of Holy Orders. We are to serve Him through our public and visible worship which includes regular attendance at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and through evangelization in which we follow Christ's command, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:19).
We must have no other gods before Him. There is only one God, a Blessed Trinity of three Divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The saints and angels in heaven, call us at every moment to worship God alone. The souls in purgatory also worship only God. But Satan and his demons, seek to distract and destroy us. They tempt us to superstition which is deviate religious feeling and to practice idolatry: diverting the worship due God to another entity. Sins of idolatry consist of divination which is the use of horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, Ouija boards, mediums and the like to gain illicit knowledge; magic which is the effort to control occult powers; irreligion which is tempting God to prove His almighty power and love; sacrilege which is profaning what is consecrated to God; and simony, the buying and selling of spiritual things. Satan and his demons also try to distract us through atheism, which replaces God's true kingship with false human autonomy that refuses to acknowledge our dependence on God and expresses itself as a practical materialism that restricts its needs and aspirations to the temporal order. Sometimes, Satan also distracts us through agnosticism, which holds that God's existence is impossible to confirm or deny. Both atheism and agnosticism deny God's objective existence and self-revelation.
God told the Israelites, "Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a graven image for yourselves, in the form of any figure ..." (Deuteronomy 4:15). God did allow images that pointed symbolically toward salvation in Christ. He told Moses to make (Numbers 21:8) a bronze serpent to heal anyone bitten by a serpent in the desert, and (Exodus 25:18) two cherubim for the ark of the covenant which would hold God's Word. He told Solomon to make (1 Kings 6:23) two cherubim in the Temple. We saw no form at Horeb but we did at Calvary, so we are now free to venerate images of Christ, as well as images of Mary, the angels, and all the saints.
The first commandment prohibits the worship of idols. Catholics do not worship images; we use them as we use family pictures in our homes, to focus our attention on the persons they portray.
The Second Commandment: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
We ought to hold God's name in the highest awe. "At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:10). Whether we refer to God, the Lord, Yahweh, Father, Jesus, Christ, Holy Spirit, or any other name by which the King of Kings is known, we must treat that name with the highest respect.
Jesus went even further, "You have heard that it was said to the men of old, 'You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.' But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything more than this comes from evil" (Matthew 5:33). Since God's holy name may never be used for trivial purposes, Jesus told us in ordinary situations to tell the truth in every time and place, so that our reputation would suffice. When we must resort to oaths and promises made in God's name, as in legal process, we tell the absolute truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
The second commandment forbids the abuse of God's name, as well as the names of the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints, since they have the beatific vision of God and are His image and likeness. This extends also to Holy Mother Church and to sacred or blessed objects. In particular, we must never utter any word of hatred, reproach, or defiance against God. We also must never use God's name in pledging ourselves to do evil.
The Third Commandment: Remember to keep holy the Lord's Day.
"In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it" (Exodus 20:11). The Sabbath day has been set apart and sanctified as an inherent part of the Creation.
God, of course, does not need rest. He rested on the seventh day as a sign for us. While Adam and Eve had the preternatural gifts of Eden, they had all the food they wanted at hand, and needed little else. But at the Fall, God decreed, "In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread" (Genesis 3:19). We have had to work for our food, clothing and shelter ever since. But, "God created man in his own image" (Genesis 1:27). We may work six days a week, but on the Lord's day we affirm our inherent human dignity by turning from labor and focusing instead on God, the Head of our covenant family.
So our patient Father in heaven told Moses, "Say to the people of Israel, 'You shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you'" (Exodus 31:13). Jesus told us, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27). The Sabbath then is God's holy gift to us.
Christ rose from the dead "on the first day of the week" (Matthew 28:1) and that evening shared a meal with His apostles (Luke 24:42). One week later Christ again ate with the apostles, this time with Thomas present, establishing Sunday as the holy day to fulfill Jesus' command, "Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19). Sunday is not the Sabbath. In the new and everlasting covenant Sunday fulfills the Sabbath (CCC 2175).
Refusal to attend Mass on Sunday or any other holy day of obligation, without a very grave reason, is a mortal sin.
Many Catholic parishes celebrate a "Vigil Mass." Jewish custom begins each day at sundown, so that Saturday evening is the beginning of Sunday. We as completed Jews satisfy a Mass obligation by attending at any time during the holy day or on the evening of the preceding day. After Mass, it is particularly blessed to spend Sunday with family together, in Christian piety, or in visiting the sick or elderly, but even if we spend it relaxing in the house or in some recreational activity, we should at all times be aware of God's abiding presence and power.
We do all that we can to earn a living without Sunday work. However, if our employer is suddenly faced with an extraordinary workload and urgently needs his staff to work on a Sunday, we may do so to help him. If all we know is retail, restaurant, or some other trade in which employers generally require Sunday work, we may do it to survive. We may never work on Sunday merely to increase our income when we could get by without it.
We remain obligated to attend Sunday Mass. We can ask our employer to adjust our schedule so we can go to Vigil Mass or early morning Mass. Catholics must also keep their own use of commercial services on Sunday to the necessary minimum so that others may keep holy the Lord's Day.
Love One Another
Torah also commanded, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). If we love God, we love also the image and likeness of God. Every human being is made in God's image and likeness. Love of neighbor means that we wish the best for everyone. We pray that each one's earthly life is illuminated by Jesus Christ, and that each finds eternal salvation in our Father's kingdom. The commandment does not require that we enjoy spending time in a particular person's company, but we know that Jesus loves him with all of His Sacred Heart and so we should treat him as one whom our Savior loves.
The remaining seven commandments teach us how to express our love for one another.
The Fourth Commandment: Honor your father and your mother.
A family is a man and woman united in marriage together with their children.
Each family is a "domestic church." Christ is Head of the whole family. The husband obeys Christ, who told us, "Whoever would be first among you must be your slave" (Matthew 20:27). The Catholic husband is first in his family and must always place their interests above his own (Ephesians 5:23). The wife is subject to her husband; she models Jesus' patient submission to the Father and raises her children to love God and neighbor. Children are obliged to obey their parents (Ephesians 6:1).
We honor our parents to honor God, the Father of our covenant family. Just as we should be grateful to God for the life and gifts He has poured out to His human family, so we are to be grateful to our own parents for the life and the gifts they have given us. It does not matter how imperfect our parents are. We must honor them because God calls us to honor them.
A child living at home with his parents should obey them unless they command him to do what is morally wrong. When the child comes of age and becomes independent, earning his own income and living in his own place, he no longer has to obey his parents. However, his obligation to love and respect his parents remains.
Grown children honor their aging parents through material and moral support, especially in times of illness, loneliness, or distress. In particular, we need to help bring our aging parents closer to Christ, as best we can.
The Fifth Commandment: You shall not kill.
God teaches us that blood is a sacred sign of life. "The life of every creature is the blood of it; therefore I have said to the people of Israel, 'You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood'" (Leviticus 17:14). Already, God was preparing His covenant family for Christ, begotten not created, whose blood is eternal life.
We must treat others with the love and mercy that we ourselves ask of God. God has given each of us His gift of earthly life and only God has the right to take it from us. Jesus held this command so important that He "built a fence" around it. "You have heard that it was said to the men of old, 'You shall not kill,' and 'whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment" (Matthew 5:21). If we even allow ourselves to think about killing anyone, we have already killed in our heart.
God told Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you" (Jer 1:5). Holy Mother Church has taught since the first century in the Didache, "You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish." At the moment of conception a new person enters the world. We may never cooperate in any way with the deliberate killing of any innocent human life. Deliberately killing a pre-born child automatically excommunicates both mother and physician (Canon 1398).
We must always protect life from conception to natural death. In self-defense, we should use the least destructive means of taking from an attacker the capacity to inflict harm. If possible, we hold him for the police without injuring him at all. However, a peaceful person may be no match for an attacker accustomed to violence. We may use violent force when it appears necessary to save our own life or another's.
Soldiers may take life in war if public authorities justly conclude that the damage inflicted by an aggressor nation is lasting, grave, and certain, if all other means of ending it are clearly impractical or ineffective, if there is serious prospect of success, and if the defense does not produce greater evil than the evil to be stopped.
Since God gave man dominion over the animal kingdom, we His image and likeness treat even animals with the mercy that we ask of God, who has dominion over us. However, since animals are not God's image and likeness, we may kill them mercifully and sparingly when we need them for food and other necessities.
The Sixth Commandment: You shall not commit adultery.
God created us male and female in His image and likeness, therefore male and female are objectively equal. Different in many ways, thanks be to God, but equal in dignity. "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24). Human sexuality has from the beginning been God's plan for His ongoing creation. "Be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28).
Even before marriage we belong to Christ, who paid on the cross for our redemption. Our body, blood, soul and humanity are His. "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body" (1 Corinthians 6:19).
The husband's body and the wife's body belong to Christ. In the covenant of marriage, with Christ's blessing, a husband gives his body to his wife, and she gives hers to him. So the body of a married man belongs first to Christ and second to his wife. The body of a married woman belongs first to Christ and second to her husband. Once we have given our body as a gift, it is not ours to give again.
God has ordained that ends of marriage are both procreative and unitive. Conjugal relations is the way that a man and woman conceive children, and a unique gift that husband and wife give one another to bring them closer together. Separating the procreative and unitive aspects of sexuality would plunge one into moral chaos. Moreover, the habit of using others for one's own pleasure cannot long be confined to sex. Regarding another person as an instrument of our own pleasure soon leads us to take what we want from others, by guile or by force. Worldwide, rising sexual activity outside marriage has been matched by rising violent crime.
The Seventh Commandment: You shall not steal.
God originally entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind. After the Fall, when sin entered the world and men displayed a propensity to seize more than their just share, our fathers divided the earth and its fruits among themselves to protect against poverty and violence.
God, who owns the goods of the earth, grants us stewardship over particular goods. We are to use His goods for love of God and one another. For love of God, we should contribute generously to Holy Mother Church, to make God's glory more visible on earth. For love of neighbor, we are to use God's goods to benefit others, especially our own family.
Jesus' parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14) tells us to go far beyond merely preserving what God has given to us. We invest what is entrusted to our care and make it grow and bear fruit.
Work done by man continues the work of creation. Work therefore is a duty. St. Paul wrote, "If anyone will not work, let him not eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Stewardship transfers justly through work, gift, or inheritance through the enterprises of individuals, businesses, and governments. We may never take or keep what has been justly apportioned to our neighbors on earth.
The Eighth Commandment: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
God is truth and wills truth. We who are His children are also called to the truth.
Jesus told Pilate, "For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth" (John 18:37). Truth exists. The Incarnation happened. Jesus teaches us what is absolutely good. Actions that support love of God are good. Actions that support love of neighbor are good. Charity is good because it improves our neighbor's spiritual or physical life on earth.
We witness to the Gospel by how we live our lives. A life filled with abundant love for God and neighbor is a true witness. "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). We witness to Christ by living not as our fallen impulses suggest but as Christ taught us to live, showing the world that Christ is more important than our own life. Martyrdom is the supreme witness to Christ as "...the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6) because it proclaims even more boldly that we hold Christ more important than our own life. Father Maximilian Kolbe gave a stirring example by volunteering to be killed at Auschwitz in place of Polish army sergeant Francis Gajowniczek. Everyone who knew what that Catholic priest did saw in him a reflection of Jesus, who freely gave His own life on the Cross for us.
Lying is the most direct offense against truth. Jesus told us that lying is the work of Satan, (John 8:44) "You are of your father the devil, ... there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature." There are many kinds of lies. False witness and perjury contribute to condemnation of the innocent, exoneration of the guilty, or unjustly increased punishment for the accused, and gravely compromise justice. Lack of respect for the reputation of persons can lead to rash judgment which assumes without foundation the moral fault of a neighbor, and to calumny which by remarks contrary to truth gives occasion to false assessment of persons. Every offense against justice and truth entails the duty of reparation, even if its author has been forgiven.
A small truth wrapped in a larger lie violates the eighth commandment. Detraction, disclosing another's faults to persons who did not know them without objectively valid reason, offends against the love of neighbor that we are to teach through an exemplary life.
In a special few cases, we may say things that are not literally true but that do not offend against justice and love of neighbor. Most small children, told that Santa Claus comes down the chimney, see that they themselves could not make it through, let alone a rotund old man with a red suit, a white beard, and a bag of brightly wrapped gifts. But they enjoy the myth and the presents, so they go along. Even the very small child who believes completely is not harmed by the myth. Writers of mystery novels weave complex plots of fictional events, and their audiences willingly suspend disbelief for the pleasure of a good yarn. Many a man tells his wife an obvious hyperbole, "You're the most beautiful woman in the world;" she knows it means, "I love you."
The Ninth Commandment: You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.
Christ told us from the mountain, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:27). We are not even to imagine sex with someone other than our own spouse.
Jesus' sixth beatitude proclaims, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8). Seeing God means heaven! "Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2).
The pure in heart are those who have focused intellect and will on God's holiness, especially in charity and chastity. Charity gives joyfully to others and chastity reserves sexual thoughts and acts to their proper place in marriage.
We pray, "Lead us not into temptation." Purity requires modesty, which protects the intimate center of the person, refusing to unveil what should remain hidden. Modesty protects the love and mystery of persons, and encourages patience and moderation. We look at others in a way that protects their inherent dignity as the image and likeness of God.
Adam and Eve lost their preternatural gifts, through which their entire lives were in harmony with God. Our fallen parents became concupiscent; they had intense desires contrary to reason. Propensity to sin came into the world, and with it a constant struggle between God's teachings that help us and our own desires for what will hurt us. St. Paul wrote, "Walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would" (Galatians 5:16). St. Paul told us the works of the flesh: "...immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like" (Galatians 5:19). He warned that those who embrace such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
The ninth commandment does not make hermits of men. A man may see a beautiful woman in joyful appreciation of God's bountiful gifts to us all. However, when he begins to experience sexual arousal or a desire for sexual relations, he must stop and move on to other things.
The Tenth Commandment: You shall not covet your neighbor's goods.
The tenth commandment teaches us not to focus on earthly possessions. Jesus told us, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will be your heart also" (Matthew 6:19). When the rich young man asked Jesus what he must do to have eternal life, Jesus told him, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me" (Matthew 19:21). We can root our lives in Christ, or in the things of this world. We cannot do both. St. John told us, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world" (1 John 2:15).
We seek to be poor in spirit, but it is a struggle. Children, seeing the material goods their friends have and the material goods advertised on television, often want the same for themselves. Sending several children to college can be very expensive. Earning a decent income enables us to help our children get started in life, make charitable contributions, and sometimes employ workers and thereby enhance their dignity. In moderation the desires of our sensitive appetite, such as to eat when we are hungry or warm ourselves when we are cold, give us a good incentive to do honest work. However, the tenth commandment strictly prohibits a disordered or unrestrained desire for what belongs to another.
Martin K. Barrack is a Catholic evangelist and a member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. He lives with his wife, Irene, at Star of the Sea, a community of Catholics near Hardy, Arkansas.