Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides Service) - The idea of dedicating a television programme to the Ten Commandments was certainly original and provoking. Provoking because our culture is heavily affected by an eleventh commandment: “do not forbid”; a commandment which has imposed itself as a code for our radical-individualist culture, denying all principles of authority and opening the door to a relativism of values which has ended up generating disorientation and fear of the future.
The people responsible for the programme not only challenged this dogma of our times, foreboding a nihilist sense of life, they also tackled a theme which might be taken for granted. Is there anything older than the ten commandments- almost ancestral -, in the life of men and women? It is difficult to find anything which can be identified more with life between persons, families, communities. But in this lies the force of the idea: to take the Tables of the Law in our hands, to read them again with the eyes of our present day culture in order to see what gives significance to our personal life, our life with other men and women. How many people today, especially the younger generations, know the ten commandments by heart? It is as if we had lost our foundations. As if what binds us to God had been discarded, put away in some dusty drawer in an old chest consigned to the loft. It is as if, having lost all recognition of a rule for our life, for our behaviour, we are unable to give a rule to our cities, to the countries we belong to, to the planet to which we are all anchored inseparably. These ancient Tables of the Law, read again on Television, show no wrinkles of the time which has passed since God gave them to Moses on Mount Sinai. On the contrary, they lead us back to what is essential giving us a rule and route for our life.
The absence of which exposes us to the idolatry of the insatiable desire to possess things and persons leaving us disarmed in the face of the navigation of our life which is in danger of becoming a journey without landings.
But the Tables of the Law are still there to help us find the route and to give rules for the freedom which is the foundation of our dignity as persons. (Luigi Bobba) (Agenzia Fides 29/7/2004 - Righe 26; Parole 388)
