Bulletin Board - Epiphany Catholic Church

Pastor’s Pen
The Ten Commandments seem to be
getting popular again. It is undoubtedly a good
thing to have them displayed and cut in stone and
even a better thing to have them inscribed in our
hearts and live them every day. Anyone who drives
a car knows how important it is to follow the rules
of the road. Any driver will tell you that the rules
of the road, far from restricting him, give him the
freedom to move and follow his route. The
readings today make the same point concerning
the Commandments. They are a source of
freedom and life. I want to concentrate on just
one in this space. No, not the sixth or the ninth,
but the one in between that urges us to justice.
The Seventh Commandment tells us “Thou
Shalt not Steal”. Stealing takes many forms, some
of them quite sophisticated. One of our great
dangers in modern times is that new forms of
stealing wouldn’t be recognized by us at all.
Phrases like ‘good business practice’ or ‘beating
the system’ may be only verbal disguises for
immoral actions. To pass off inferior goods, for
instance, or overcharge for products and services,
is to steal. To pay inadequate wages, charge
exorbitant interest rates or close down a firm for
the sake of the ‘quick-kill’ is to steal. To idle on
somebody else’s time, to tiptoe around a job for
hours, to draw good money for inferior work is to
steal. To pilfer from a supermarket or a shop, to
draw social benefits to which we’re not entitled, to
live way beyond our means and refuse to pay our
bills is to steal. Injustices like these have woven
their way insidiously into the texture of our
society. Nothing will change unless individuals
change. It’s no excuse for the Christian to say,
‘because others are doing it, it’s right for me’.
Justice requires us to have a very sensitive
conscience… “Thou shalt not steal.”
Do you think of justice as a cold thing?
Charity warm, justice cold – and not helped very
much by the traditional image of the scales? For
me, justice is not a cold thing at all; it’s a burning
reality, a flame within, a passionate conviction
about what is right and wrong. A sense of justice
is what elevates a person head and shoulders
above the light-fingered and the corrupt. What a
reassurance it is, for instance, to know that a
public figure or a public servant cannot be bought!
What a wonderful thing it is to be able, with
complete confidence, to leave somebody in charge
of your premises or your home. Justice is such
an admirable and beautiful thing that, if there was
never a commandment about it, it is something to
which we should all aspire. When I was a young
priest, a woman came to me one day with a
sizeable sum of money that she had found on the
street. She needed it herself and I knew she
needed it, but it wasn’t hers and she gave it to the
poor. That woman had a quality within her that
money couldn’t buy. St. James talks about it in
the second reading and Our Lord talks about it in
the Gospel. A good word for it is integrity.
I came across something the other day that
I think is very good. Just four lines but they are
well worth remembering. They go like this:
Cowardice asks – is it safe?
Expediency asks – is it politic?
Vanity asks – is it popular?
But conscience asks – is it right?
Indeed, conscience and justice ask the
same question. So when we are tempted to steal
in one way or another, the question we should all
ask ourselves is: "Is it right?"