In our house you would get a scolding for not putting your plate in the dish washer, in our house you would be in big trouble for traipsing across the kitchen floor in dirty boots and in our house you would risk excommunication if you left a wet towel on the bed!
All homes have house rules and regulations. The rules may be a little more lax if you live by yourself but never the less you most likely would have some self-imposed rules in place to live by.
In society we have rules and regulations also only now we call them laws. They serve the same purpose: they ensure a harmonious organized way of living plus, they try to guarantee respect and equality for everyone.
Three thousand years ago Moses received the moral laws from God, the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments, are broken down first, into three laws which tell us how to act morally towards God and then the last seven which tell us how to act morally towards each other.
But what’s to be gained from complying with these commandments, these laws?
We know the outcome from complying with the rules in our house: we end up with a clean house. And we know the outcome from complying with the laws of society: we live in harmony with our fellow man. But what do the ten commandments get us?
A few years ago, business expert Stephen Covey published a book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In this book, he identified certain behavior patterns that were common to people who succeed in the world. The book was an incredible hit - it sold over 15 million copies. One reason it was so effective was because the principles he identified and described are all in harmony with human nature, they're common sense.
The second "habit" he discusses in the book is this: successful people "begin with the end in mind.”
It seems so simple. We do it all the time. When we start driving the car, we make our first turn based on our final destination. When we choose a career, we base our choice on a projected outcome - a goal we want to achieve.
But what about life itself? How often do we think about the end, the goal of our whole lives? Every day we step out of bed we stand one day closer to our eternal destination.
Jesus wants us to begin each day with the end - the potential of Heaven - in mind, so that each day we are able to make choices that will lead to true, lasting happiness, which only comes from living and dying in friendship with him. Our road map for those choices are the laws that were give to Moses and reaffirmed by Jesus in today’s Gospel when he tells us that he has come not to abolish the Law but to fulfill the law.
Our faith tells us that compliance with these ten laws will result in our final goal of Heaven.
Jesus fine tunes that road map even more today when he removes the literal sense from each law and instead asks: although you haven't killed anyone have you been angry with someone, although you haven't been unfaithful to your spouse have you had thoughts in that direction, although you've never stolen have you deprived anyone of what is rightly theirs.These are the moral questions Jesus asks.
Each new day is a new challenge for us to begin with the end in mind, to begin our day with the thought of the potential of Heaven being a reality in the future. It might be a distant dot way in the future or perhaps something we'll experience before the day is through. With our focus on the final goal of heaven we have our moral laws from God to give us general guidance. The question we have to ask ourselves is: is our moral compass pointing in the right direction?
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