Transcript
Emily: Do you ever feel like religion has too many rules? Don’t you wish there was just one, most important thing you could focus on? Someone actually asked Jesus to tell him the one most important thing. A man approached Jesus with this question: “What is the greatest commandment?”
Edmund: In response, Jesus gave two answers. He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul.” And He explained that this is the greatest commandment. And then He went on to say the second is to love your neighbor as yourself.
Emily: Many people don’t know this, but the Ten Commandments are grouped and ordered in an intentional way that reflects this. The first three commandments are about the ONE THING, the most important thing: the love of God. And the other Commandments reveal how we love our neighbor…
Edmund: …Which is also another way we continue to love and honor God.
Emily: The love that God desires from us is not blind obedience. God doesn’t demand our response. At the heart of the Commandments, He invites us to respond out of the loving relationship He desires to have with us.
Edmund: Following the first three Commandments means more than just believing in God. They are about putting the most important relationship — the one we have with God — first, above all else. ALL our other relationships and actions fall into place when we focus on putting our relationship with God first.
Emily: The Commandments make explicit the response that we are invited to give God: We are made to love, worship, and serve God. Let’s look at the first three Commandments from this perspective.
Edmund: The first Commandment is “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.” The call to love God directs and organizes every aspect of our life. Once we get our love of God right, everything else in our lives falls into place. This Commandment calls us to believe in God, to hope in Him for salvation, and to love Him.
Emily: When we are in denial of God’s power and His desire for a relationship with us, we’re really putting our trust and life in the hands of something other than God. This can even mean putting ourselves, others, or things above God when we decide to trust ourselves instead of Him. God wants us to trust Him. We act against this Commandment when we turn to powers other than God.
Edmund: Those powers can be things like superstitions, psychics, false gods, or other forms of looking for supernatural power outside of God, or even, and perhaps most often, when we place our trust only in ourselves; like our talents, our wisdom, or our resources.
Emily: The second Commandment is: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Just as we need to know someone’s name to be in relationship with him or her, God entrusts His name to us so we can call on Him in prayer. Names are powerful. The Catechism says in paragraph 2158 “The name is the icon of the person. It demands respect as a sign of the dignity of the one who bears it.”
Edmund: And the Catechism makes this clear in paragraph 2146, where it says “The second commandment forbids the abuse of God’s name, i.e., every improper use of the names of God, Jesus Christ, but also of the Virgin Mary and all the saints.”
Emily: This isn’t just because the improper use of names is an offense against God. The way we speak about God affects us. Our words have power. God’s name brings His presence. Jesus’ name is a prayer. We should reverence God’s name in our speech and prayer because it affects our relationship with God and others.
Edmund: This also includes using God’s name to make an oath or promise. Oaths invoke God’s name as a pledge of the faithfulness we will show to a promise we have made. We must never take them lightly and do our best to follow through on them.
Emily: We might be tempted to think that taking the Lord’s name in vain only means to use it to swear. But taking the Lord’s name in vain literally means to use God’s name in any context where it isn’t uttered with deep reverence.
Edmund: The third Commandment is: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” In the Old Testament, the sabbath was celebrated on the seventh day, the last day of the week, recalling in Genesis God’s creation in six days and His resting on the seventh day. Christ’s Resurrection takes place the day after the sabbath, on the first day of the week. In this way, Jesus’ Resurrection takes place on the “eighth day”, which symbolizes the first day of a new creation.
Emily: For us as Christians, this became the first of all days, the Lord’s Day, celebrated on Sunday. Honoring the Lord’s Day by participating in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, fulfills the sabbath. Just like the Eucharist is the true fulfillment of the Old Testament Passover sacrifice.
Edmund: By setting Sunday apart and participating in the worship of God on Sunday, we observe and honor this Commandment. God invites us to participate in His blessed life daily, but in a special way on Sunday.
Emily: God modeled worship for us by putting into the order of creation a day of rest. God, the Lord of the Sabbath, gives us the rest of Sunday, the day of Jesus’ Resurrection, as a sign of His faithfulness. The Sabbath is made for us!
Edmund: God calls us to dedicate one day to Him, taking a pause from the world and our worries and work to enjoy our relationship with Him. This is the Sunday obligation. Resting from work reminds us that all our blessings come from our loving Father.
Emily: When we go to Mass on Sundays and Holy Days, we enter into the worship of God for which we were made. We should do our best to set Sundays apart, attend Mass, and rest so we can honor God’s Sabbath.
Edmund: These first three Commandments unlock a blueprint for the life of love, joy, and peace we were created for. And we can begin to experience that life here on earth!
Emily: This is why the Church rejoices in the Ten Commandments, and that God reveals in the first three Commandments the way in which He desires to be loved so we can respond to Him.
