Alphonsus Liguori, an 18th century saint, lawyer, founder
of the
Redemptorist congregation, champion of Marian devotion,
and last but
not least, patron of moral theologians. We can take this
occasion to
remind ourselves of our grave duty always to refine our
moral sense.
This moral
sense is none other than the abiding awareness
that all our human acts, starting with our thoughts and
desires, and
then our words and deeds, should be good in the sense
that they ought
to be inspired and oriented toward nothing less than love
for God and
for others.
That’s why St.
Paul once said in his praise of charity
(love of God): “If I speak with the tongues of men, and
of angels and
have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a
tinkling cymbal.
“And if I
should have prophecy and should know all
mysteries and all knowledge, and if I should have all
faith, so that I
could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am
nothing.
“And if I
should distribute all my goods to feed the poor,
and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have
not charity, it
profits me nothing.” (1 Cor 13,1-3)
No human act is
good unless it begins and ends with God,
and as a corollary, with others. This has to be made
clear because we
often supplant that truth with our own version of
goodness based on
practicality, popularity, and other worldly criteria that
in
themselves are good, but good always in relation to God.
In other words,
goodness of our human acts does not depend
on us alone. It depends fundamentally and indispensably
on God. We
cannot help but think theologically if we are truly
concerned about
the morality of our human acts.
That’s because
more than just depending on our own
individual consciences and collective consensus, we need
to depend
first on faith, the gift God gives to us to start sharing
who he is
and what he has, since we are his image and likeness and
adopted
children of his, expected to share in the very life of
God. Faith
leads to charity.
Our thinking,
judging and reasoning should be inspired by
faith. Actually, we cannot help but somehow color our
thinking by some
faith, whether it is the true faith, or mere superstition
or man-made
philosophies and ideologies that while containing some
good and truth,
cannot cover the whole reality of our humanity and of the
world.
This is because
our intelligence and will are always in
need of some basis and reference for their operations.
They cannot
auto-generate truth. They can only receive, reflect and
develop truth
whose very foundation is God, the Creator of all things,
the very
foundation of reality, and the Truth himself.
Given the
current secularized world culture, where God
hardly has any place and where what is considered good is
simply
derived from some political consensus, we need to make a
tremendous
effort to recover the true place God occupies in our life
and in our
affairs.
What is needed
is a conscious effort to make God and his
love and truth the beginning and end of our thoughts,
desires, words
and actions. We cannot take this duty for granted
anymore.
We have to be
careful with the thinking that as long as we
are doing “good,” we are actually doing things for God.
This principle
has to be understood well. It can only work properly if
what we are
doing and the ultimate motive of our actions conform to
the law of
God, to his will, his truth and love.
But many times,
we can cover our bad, selfish motives
under the guise of some externally good acts. We can be
quite generous
in giving alms, for example, but not out of love for God
and for
others, but rather for gaining fame, honor, privileges,
etc. This is
not a moral act, because it is not done out of love for
God.
Even worse is
when we don’t make any effort to know the
will of God for us in any given moment. We just presume
that whatever
we think is good is also what God wants of us at that
moment. This is
a dangerous presumption.
We need to make
a conscious effort to get in touch with
God, because only then can we fairly think that we are
moral in our
actuations. That’s why we need to pray, to act and live
in his
presence always.
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