THE GOAL OF OUR LIVES
The final line of today’s Gospel is, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” How realistic is this exhortation? Is it really possible to attain such a goal? People who take seriously the call to live morally upright lives seem to be in the minority now. When one talks to young people and one examines the media for evidence of a call to be committed to a set of values for a lifetime, it is difficult to find anything. Relativism is the underlying philosophy of today’s generation. It means that there are no “hard and fast” moral rules applicable across all peoples and cultures. Everything is dependent upon cultural conditioning, religious beliefs and so on.
Relativism cannot be logically defended as it is not a consistent ethic. If rules change to accommodate the culture of a group of people, it does not make sense to speak of any law or rule or program of morality that is applicable to all. Such a reality will produce chaos as there is no universal value system upheld by all. We see this challenge when people discuss the morality of abortion. Depending on one’s position on the issue, they ascribe different values to the various stages of life of a human person. The only consistent ethic is the one where all life is considered to be inviolable from conception on. (This is the position of the Catholic Church.)
It is important that humanity has a universal set of values to uphold across national and cultural borders. If we cannot agree on such, then we will never be able to agree on the individual moral questions that arise in life.
The suggestion in today’s Gospel that perfection is a goal of the moral life is a reminder to us that there is a universal set of values that is applicable to all and that we should work hard to discover them — and live by them each day of our lives. Fr. Steve Tynan, MGL
REFLECTION QUESTIONS: How well informed are you on the teachings of the Catholic Church on moral matters? Do you need to do any study in this area?
Holy Spirit, open my mind to the truth of the Gospel and the Church’s teachings on moral matters so that I may live them to the full.
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