Video Transcript
Emily: During holidays growing up, our family would separate the adults’ table from the kids’ table. All the young cousins, nieces, and nephews sat at the kids’ table for meals. As a kid, I would dream of the day I’d be able to sit at the adult table.
Edmund: Yeah, me too. And as you grow up you realize you’re more and more interested in adult conversations. But I remember realizing there was a lot about the adult table I didn’t really understand.
Emily: Adults don’t act like kids at the dinner table. There is a level of respect that adults give each other during the conversation. Adults understand the rules of table manners; how to ask someone to pass the bread, and how to listen and engage in conversation so there is a nice flow.
Edmund: Kids need to grow and learn the rules of table manners. But even more than that, kids learn how to be ‘in relationship’ with other people at a dinner table. And a big part of this is learning how to be more considerate of other people.
Emily: You could say that as kids we’re learning how to conduct ourselves for a common good – that of a delightful dinner.
Edmund: And of course, different cultures have different expectations for eating together at the table. [global visual examples] But this is true even outside the dinner table and in every relationship; every interaction between two people. Every team, community, couple, and family has expectations for how each person acts and what types of behavior do or do not contribute to a healthy relationship.
Emily: It can be tempting to think of these expectations as arbitrary “rules” that limit our freedom. But in reality, these expectations actually are an opportunity to use our freedom for the benefit of the relationships.
Edmund: As human beings we’re faced with a lot of decisions every day. We have the freedom to choose how we behave in every situation. Animals don’t have this ability. God created us in His image and likeness, and wants us to learn to use our freedom to choose love and goodness, and to choose to be with him.
Emily: Since we choose how we act, our freedom comes with a responsibility for our actions. Which leaves us with this decision to make before every act we undertake: what is the right way to act in this situation? This is what we call morality. We are responsible for choosing between right and wrong; between good and bad acts.
Edmund: That’s right. God didn’t create robots who love Him because they just do what they’re programmed to do. In fact, that’s not love. At the heart of love is a free choice of the will. If someone is forced to act a certain way, that’s not love. And out of love, God allows us to choose freely.
Emily: So we constantly face decisions about how we should act. We can choose to act in ways that allow us to participate more and more in God’s beatitude, or we can choose the opposite, which would be what we call evil and sin. So to exercise our freedom as we should, we should work to understand the nature of God’s beatitude and understand the reality of this relationship and its rules, so we know how to act.
Edmund: It’s like God is at the adult table and we need to learn what it looks like to choose the good in every situation, just like Jesus does.
Emily: Since God created us with a desire for happiness, we have a sense of what acts are good or bad because we are attracted to goodness. In the deepest places in our heart, we can hear God’s voice calling us to love, to do what is good, and to avoid evil. We call this deep sense of right and wrong our conscience.
Edmund: Sin can tempt us to believe that an evil act will give us happiness. When we choose goodness, we grow in freedom and grow in our ability to choose goodness again. When we choose evil acts, we become weakened in our sense of good and evil and in our ability to choose what is good the next time.
Emily: God has revealed to us clearly what acts are evil and what goodness looks like in the 10 Commandments and the Beatitudes. We can learn to love the way God loves by understanding the laws of God’s table.
Edmund: Jesus also reveals what it looks like to choose goodness at all times. In a way, In a way, Jesus allows us to see and hear what the life of the Trinity is like. We’re able to look and listen to the three persons of the Trinity at their dinner table. We can overhear how the persons of the Trinity treat one another, how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit talk to one another, and how they love one another. Through Jesus, we can become adopted sons and daughters of God, and learn what God’s life looks like.
Emily: Jesus wants to give us grace to overcome sin and our weaknesses so we are strong enough to sit at the table with the Trinity. Through the sacraments we are given the gift of God’s life. The Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit into our hearts through the sacraments. And with this grace, we are strengthened and healed from sin, and we begin to participate in the life of the Trinity.
Edmund: We are strengthened so we can begin acting, speaking, and loving in the same way Jesus does, because, through our life in the Holy Spirit, Jesus Himself is living in us. As we learn how to choose what is good and practice doing so, we are strengthening a habit of choosing to act as Jesus acts at the table. We call this habit of choosing the good a “virtue.”
Emily: And we see what that looks like in Jesus’ life of goodness. This is why we should avoid evil and choose to live as Jesus lives, as a son or daughter of God. Because God intended that we live with freedom and invites us to choose to become His adopted sons and daughters.
