EUROPE/ITALY - The Ten Commandments Today: reflection by Giovanni Cantoni, Italian national regent of Catholic Action: association of lay Catholics to encourage the study and diffusion of the Church’s Social Teaching

Friday, 30 July 2004

Rome (Fides Service) - “1. «If you love me, keep my commandments» (Jn. 14, 15). The rule given by the Lord Jesus is susceptible to a descriptive historical transcription on the part of a «non protagonist»: observer «Those who love Him, will keep his commandments». But, reworded as «he who accepts my commandments and keeps them, love me» (Jn 14, 21); and again «he who loves me will be loved by my Father and I too will love him» (Jn. 14, 21), after underlining the need to «accept» God’s love we can add to the previous versions of the rule, - prescriptive and descriptive - an existential version, «the advantage», of the rule «If you love me you will keep my commandments».
2. The Law of the Ten Commandments «His commandments», was the law proposed after Original Sin to recall the natural law, that is God’s idea of creation, and the principle relations it implies: with God on the first Table and with neighbour and creation on the second (cfr. Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 2070-2071).
3. Hence to keep the Commandments means to adapt our nature, adaptation rendered difficult by Original Sin and the burden of personal sins: a practice of an ascetic nature, which implies fatigue but not contrary to nature and praiseworthy because it is difficult. To respect the Commandments means to imitate the Lord Jesus, true Man “born of the Virgin Mary … [...] he became man similar to us in all things except sin» (Gaudium et Spes 22, cfr. Heb 4, 15).
4. Anyone who loves himself strives to be a real human person and to restore by imitating the Lord Jesus true God and true Man, the image and likeness of God obfuscated by original sin but not cancelled.
5. Recalling that the Commandments are addressed first of all to a community - «Listen, Israel» (Deut. 5, 1), «You will tell the people of Israel» (Lev. 20, 2) -, we can understand José Ortega y Gasset who wrote about the people of Spain in his day, describing it as a historical and social reality «invertebrada», without a backbone, that is without the Commandments. Hence the necessity for every society, in Italy, in the rest of Europe, in the world, to verify constantly the state of its adaptation to the natural law, to the Commandments and to continue to work on this adaptation. Grace can render nature perfect on the condition that nature does not give up.” (Giovanni Cantoni) (Agenzia Fides 30/7/2004 - Righe 28; Parole 405)


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