Msgr. Peter J. Vaghi
Title of Series: "The Top 10 (Commandments)"

"The First and Second Commandments: Liberating Words of Faith and Holiness"

Session 2 - October 2nd, 2003

In our first meditation in September, I set forth the approach to the ten commandments which I will be following this year. For each commandment, my approach is three-pronged: l.) the Hebrew understanding of that commandment; 2.) the effect of the Christ event on that commandment and 3) some practical implications for each of us.

The ten commandments, variously called the decalogue or the 10 words or sounds of love from Mt. Sinai, are set forth on two tablets or tables. One tablet contains the first three commandments, the love of God, and the second tablet contains the other seven, the love of neighbor. "The two tables shed light on one another; they form an organic unity....One cannot adore God without loving all men, his creatures." CCC 2069

In this evening's meditation, I will cover the first two commandments on the first tablet. My reflection is entitled "The First and Second Commandments: Liberating Words of Faith and Holiness."

The First Commandment

I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.

You shall not have other gods besides me. You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them. For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishments for their fathers' wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation but bestowing mercy, down to the thousandth generation, on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments. Deut 5:6-10

1.) The Hebrew Understanding

The first commandment flows directly from the prologue, verse 6 above, that self-portrait of a God, our God, who identifies Himself as One who brought the chosen people out of "that place of slavery." He is a God who brings the Israelites to freedom and is linked to deliverance from bondage. It is a call to the liberating virtue of faith in God, hope in Him and, above all, love Him above all else. Let's look then at this first commandment in sections--

+++"You shall not have other gods besides me." Can you not experience the sense of exclusivity--a sense of responsibility of the Hebrew people in their covenant relationship with Yahweh, a responsibility of absolute faithfulness? The Israelites had already experienced the loving faithfulness of God towards them (freeing them from slavery). Now their response of faithfulness was demanded, an exclusive and total allegiance to their God. He brooks no rivals, no "other gods besides me."

These "other gods" are those remembered from Egypt and those to be encountered in the promised land. 64 times the words "other gods" are mentioned in the Old Testament. There was concern about the fertility gods they would encounter as they became farmers in the promised land and left the desert. The fertility cult would be difficult to avoid and that is why the Lord gave them this first commandment.

The Hebrews had known their God in the Exodus, had sensed His presence in the desert, but would they also be able to find Him, His presence, in the new lifestyle they were about to adopt in the promised land? That is the challenge of the first commandment. Their God, Yahweh, had already proven His loving faithfulness. Now it is their turn to show their faith. The first commandment calls for a style of life dominated by a relationship to God. It affects the whole life of a whole covenant community--every aspect of life, action, thought and emotion. It is at the foundation of the biblical understanding of religion itself.

+++"You shall not carve idols for yourselves...[images] you shall not bow down before them or worship them." Prohibition of images--images which in some physical way intended to represent God Himself. That was the prohibition. No "created" image does legitimate service to a "living" God. That's the point. God communicated Himself, revealed Himself, indeed identified Himself in two ways--by action (delivering His people from slavery) AND by His voice (the Lord "spoke" to His people on Sinai, on Horeb). He did not reveal Himself in images. That would have restricted, limited the transcendental and living and dynamic nature of our God. That would be too static. No idol can capture a living God, the God who revealed Himself to the Hebrew people. No cultic representative can do justice to a living God. Only a human being made in the image and likeness of God, not a plastic or metal representative can adequately represent a living God, a faithful human person and human community bent on doing God's will, a will made known by a living God, a visible testimony of the active and real presence of God living in the world. The first commandment liberates us to having an exclusive faith in God.

Without the prohibition of the making of images, it seems highly probable that Israelite religion would have fitted much more comfortably into the pattern of ancient Near Eastern religion. The Israelites were moved in the direction of such a pattern over and over again; the making of young bulls for the sanctuaries of Bethel and Dan was such a move. Worship upon the hills at the "high places" throughout much of Israel's history certainly involved a move in the direction of representations of the high gods through standing stones and occasionally through forbidden representation of the female and male deities of the West Semitic cultures.

(Harrelson, The Ten Commandments and Human Rights, pp69-70)

+++ "For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God..." How do we understand the concept of jealously? Doesn't that have a pejorative connotation? For sure that is not an appealing characteristic Understood properly, however, it is God's way of saying that He will have nothing less than your full devotion and you will have nothing less than His full love. Oh the sounds of love coming from Mt. Sinai, Mt Horeb! It is the kind of attribute that belongs to a marriage relationship where there is a proper covenantal jealousy between husband and wife. It is a "holy" jealousy of God for His children. He created us. He loves us. He wants us for Himself. He knows what is harmful to us. He is aware of what is capable of separating us from Him, from His love. His kind of jealousy is not restrictive, mean or cruel. It is an infinite love and infinitive goodness.

+++Finally, Yahweh speaks of "punishments" for those who hate Him, down to the third and fourth generation. But significantly, He speaks--in the same breadth--of bestowing "mercy" down to the 1000th generation "on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments." The implication of these expressions for understanding God's expectation and God's nature is clear. Our God is "rich in mercy." The scales are tipped; the divine character is weighted towards mercy, the restorative power of God. Love and mercy, to the 1000th generation, are the dominate characteristic. The first commandment reveals to the Hebrew people, and to us, a God who demands exclusive obedience and love, a God who cannot be captured by idols, a God "jealous" for our love but One with a proven track record of total, merciful and complete love for His children.

2.) The Effect of the Christ Event

"Then, after speaking in many and varied ways through the prophets, "now at last in these days God has spoken to us in His Son" (Heb. 1:1-2). For He sent His Son, the eternal Word, who enlightens all men, so that He might dwell among men and tell them of the innermost being of God (see John 1:1-18). Jesus Christ, therefore, the Word made flesh, was sent as "a man to men." (3) He "speaks the words of God" (John 3;34), and completes the work of salvation which His Father gave Him to do (see John 5:36; Divine Revelation 17:4). To see Jesus is to see His Father (John 14:9). For this reason Jesus perfected revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself:through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth. He revealed that God was with us, to deliver us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to eternal life." Dei Verbum 4

In Jesus Christ, the God revealed to Moses, a God who jealously seeks total and exclusive faithfulness, becomes fully revealed to us. To see Him is to see the Father, to contemplate the face of God. He is both the revealer and the revealed. The Christ event completes and perfects what was revealed by our God on Mt. Sinai, Mt. Horeb in the First Commandment. It is the same Jesus, who after being tempted in the desert for the third time, said to Satan--recalling the first commandment: "The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve." Mt 4: 10 Furthermore, "the Christian veneration of images is not contrary to the first commandment which proscribes idols....The honor paid to sacred images is a 'respectful veneration,' not the adoration due to God alone." CCC 2132

In Jesus Christ, we can know about our God in more specific ways. Like the God of Mt. Sinai, He too speaks and acts in history. Speaking/acting and words/deeds remain His identifying characteristics.

Not only does Jesus--in words and deeds--fully reveal the God about which Yahweh spoke in the first commandment--for "He is the image of the invisible God"--He makes it possible for us "reborn in the grace of Baptism" to become children of the invisible God , to carry Him within us, to live His law in a new way. Now, the divine law--once written on stone tablets--has also been written on the human heart. Remember the words of Ezekiel:

I will give you a new heart
and place a new spirit within you,
taking from your bodies your stony hearts
and giving you natural hearts.

I will put my spirit within you
and make you live by my statutes,
careful to observe my decrees.

(Ezekiel 36: 26-27)

That new spirit is the Spirit of Jesus Christ--the life of His Holy Spirit--the treasure in earthen vessels-- which makes it possible for us to know our God, to hear His voice and to live His commandments. "The way we can be sure of our knowledge of him is to keep his commandments." l John 2:3 It is in the doing that we come to know Jesus and that is possible because of the Holy Spirit living within us.

In summary, I cite John Paul II speaking in Poland on June l, 1991 who makes reference to the first commandment: "There is more to what we have in Christ than the Decalogue. But who more than Christ--crucified and risen--confirms the power of the first of the 10 commandments: 'You shall have no other gods before me'?"

3.) Some Practical Implications for Each of Us

Is God, the God fully revealed by and in Jesus Christ, the foundation of our lives? That is the question put to us the first commandment-- "to have no other gods besides me." In the words of Deut 6:4-5 (the Shema), do we really heed the Lord's command: "You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength."This then is foundational, foundational to our relationship with Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

A few questions and a few suggestions--

Each of us knows, if we were to examine our consciences, that other priorities, other gods, which are so often are mascaraded as good, pull on our time, pull us away from God. This is not to push or pander to guilt. It is to expose anew the struggles, the competition in each of us between "life in Christ" (a dynamis, a power which helps us live the commandments) a life which needs conscious, regular, attentive care and focus AND the "life" imposed, the life made attractive, on us by the world--a world of billable hours, patients and clients, countless meetings, income, clout, connections, powerful positions, the demands of instant communications, prestigious offices and titles, maybe even work itself. Each can become a god unto itself, if we are not careful.

The first commandment challenges us to live an examined life, to identify the driving forces which captivate our motivations and impel our actions. They are unique to each of us. Is it Jesus? Is our response, our worship of Him made concrete every day in prayer? For Christians, praying is as essential as breathing. Or do we make ourselves God?

We are taught to live our lives in charity and love for others but so often we tend to live purely for ourselves. Our consumer society educates us to think in terms of our own rights and responsibilities, our needs rather than our duties to others. Even a recent Supreme Court opinion speaks of an "autonomy of self" (Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in the sodomy case Lawrence v. Texas). This is a form of modern atheism, a life without God, a sin against the first commandment. As the catechism teaches in the section on the first commandment: "Atheism is often based on a false conception of human autonomy, exaggerated to the point of refusing any dependence on God." CCC 2126

The individual, "all bound up in himself, this man who makes himself not only the center of his every interest, but dares to propose himself as the principle and reason of all reality", finds himself ever more bereft of that "supplement of soul" which is all the more necessary to him in proportion as a wide availability of material goods and resources deceives him about his self-sufficiency. There is no longer a need to fight against God; the individual feels he is simply able to do without him.

(Pastores Dabo Vobis 7)

Msgr. Carlo Caffara, developing this theme, has written a perceptive book entitled Living in Christ (Fundamental Principles of Catholic Moral Teaching) About the first commandment, he writes:

It is for this reason that the first Commandment expresses the first requirement of every life in Christ. It is because God is God, infinitely transcending man, that to be called by him, in Christ, to become partakers of his own life constitutes an unimaginable grace, absolute gratuitousness. If obedience to the first Commandment is not the foundation of our relationship with God, then our whole existence becomes false. And again, only the act of faith is an adequate response and thus the root and foundation of our whole life in Christ.

Disobedience to the first Commandment, the sin against the first Commandment, is idolatry. It consists in recognizing someone or something as one's own God; in considering absolute what is relative, and relative what is absolute. When we speak of idolatry, then, we must not think only of its most naïve, primitive forms, but of our forms of idolatry.

These forms can regard our intellect. When it is elevated to the status of one definitive criterion of truth, the ultimate source of truth, we find ourselves before the idolatry of human intelligence.

These forms can regard our will. When it chooses autonomously concerning its Absolute Good, rejecting the existence of every moral value that imposes itself absolutely on the will, when it locates its ultimate end in a created good, we find ourselves before the idolatry of the will.

In other words, idolatry consists in the adoration of a limited good. As Saint Paul taught, it is the origin of every sin, of all of history insofar as it is dominated by evil.

(Cafarra 211)

I conclude this section with a passage from Fr. McBride's book The Ten Commandments (Sounds of Love from Sinai): "Correcting untrue meanings about the real God--abandoning false gods--is only one aspect of the teaching of the First Commandment. Equally important is the positive effort to perceive the real God: caring, forgiving, loving, challenging and actively nourishing our free participation in the work of salvation. God asks us to find out who God really is, to embark on a lifelong faith journey." (13) The first commandment is thus God's liberating voice inviting us to faith in Him and Him alone.

The Second Commandment

You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain. For the LORD will not leave unpunished him who takes his name in vain. Deut 5:ll

This is the bumper to bumper in heavy traffic commandment!!!

l.) The Hebrew Understanding

The second commandment has often been taken- on its face--as a prohibition against blasphemy I.e., words of hatred, reproach or defiance against God, His angels and His saints. Such interpretation, although certainly a part of the commandment, is too narrow. Instead, the commandment is concerned with the name of God, respect for the sacredness of His name--Yahweh ("I am who am")--which gives some clue to the intimacy of the covenant relationship. For the name of the Lord is holy.

In the Near East, the name of a person or God was also considered to contain certain implicit power (e.g. The Moabit king sought to use Balaam to curse the Israelites magically in the name of the Lord.) Thus, one of the purposes of the commandment was to proscribe the use of God's name in magic, which was an explicit attempt to harness God's power for personal ends or for a "worthless power." In fact, any attempt to manipulate God for personal ends comes under the prohibition.

In scripture generally, the name of a thing indicates much more than our typical understanding of it. The biblical meaning of a name indicates its very nature, its reality, its essence--that for which it is what it is. To know someone's name means to penetrate into the reality of a person. It is not simply the appellation of an individual. It is so much more. The change of a name, for example, means a change of that person's very identity or mission in life or character, e.g. The name Abram was changed by God to Abraham ("father of the multitude"); Sarai was changed to Sarah ("mother of kings"); Jacob became Israel ("God is strong").

It is clear in the Hebrew scriptures that the use of the name of God played an important role in Israel's faith from the very beginning. One "called" on the name; "prophesied" in the name; "blessed" the name; "praised," "trusted," "sought refuge" in the name. On the other hand, the misuse of a name remained a continuing threat. It was forbidden to profane His name, to blaspheme, to curse, to defile, to abuse, to swear falsely.

For sure, then, this early prohibition of the misuse of Yahweh's name was an attempt to protect the divine name. In doing so, it was an attempt to protect the very nature of a loving God who had entered a contractual relationship with His people out of love.

2.) The Effect of the Christ Event

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches: "Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors, 'Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow.' But I say to you, do not swear at all..." Mt. 5:33-34 "Jesus teaches that every oath involves a reference to God and that God's presence and his truth must be honored in all speech." CCC 2153

There is, after all, a holiness to the divine name. The name "Jesus," at which "every knee must bend in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth" (Phil 2:10) comes from the Hebrew Yeshua (Joshua) which means "Yahweh saves." Here again, the name reveals the nature. In Jesus, God saves.

"In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk." (Acts 3:6) With these words, Peter took hold of a beggar who had been lame from birth and lifted him from his feet. The surprised man had no choice but to stand. He began to praise God jumping and dancing. But the crowed needed an explanation. Peter addressed them: "Why do you stare at us, as though by our own power of piety we had made him walk?....By faith in His [Jesus'] name, His name itself made this man strong...." (Acts 3:12) The name of Jesus healed the man.

The name of Jesus has miraculous power. Bernard of Clairvaux once wrote that the name of Jesus has the three-fold property of oil--it illuminates, its nourishes and it anoints. When preached, it gives light. When meditated upon, it nourishes. When invoked, it alleviates the wounds of mind and soul. In His name, we are made whole again.

3.) Some Practical Implications for Each of Us

At Baptism, each of us is given a name, a name for all eternity, a name by which God calls us. Quoting Canon Law, the catechism teaches: "Parents, godparents and the pastor are to see that he is given a Christian name." CCC 2156 It is most often the name of a saint--one who has lived a life of exemplary Christian life. A Christian name is another way to break down the barrier between our aggressively secular society and the call to holiness which belongs to each of us, for in a Christian name we come in contact with the holy.

It is thus too simplistic to see the 2nd commandment as a only a prohibition from using the Lord's name in vain, although for sure it means that. No, it means more than that. It means a reverence and respect for the sacredness of the name of God.

When we bow our heads at the name of Jesus, we show respect for His name and honor the 2nd commandment. When we share His name and share His life with others, we show a respect and reverence for Him.

And it takes courage to speak of the name of Jesus. Listen to the responsory for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul: "They gave us their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ"--the ultimate Christian witness. Do we give up our lives for His name, even in little ways?

Reflect with me in conclusion on the holiness of His name and the liberating word of holiness found in the 2nd commandment. In the Our Father, we pray "Hallowed be your name." In the Magnificat, we pray "From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name."And from the Benediction hymn: "Holy God we praise thy Name." Psalm 8: "O Lord, our Lord, how glorious is your name over all the earth." Amen