Whatsoever Ye Do
As we meander our way along the treelined avenues of life, we are constantly barraged with distracting voices, all of them offering us advice. Most of the advice is insignificant, and we can use our common sense as to whether or not we should take it. “Take this pill and you’ll have more energy!” “Stop for lunch at this fast-food restaurant, the burgers taste better!” “Wear this or that brand of sneakers and you’ll get there faster!” All these little voices in our head come from people who would like to improve our lives—probably not, by the way, out of any genuine interest for our welfare but rather to line their own pockets. No matter. We’re free to take their advice or not—the results are not of great significance in our lives and we’re at liberty to listen or ignore. There’s usually very little if any moral aspect to this type of advice, so we can choose either McDonald’s or Wendy’s for lunch without offending God.
Unfortunately though, there are other voices in our lives. We have to live with a variety of neighbors and co-workers, all with their own moral values, many of which conflict with our own. They would like to talk to us about things we know we should avoid, they want to persuade us to join them in their morally unhealthy lifestyles. Their motivation for leading us into temptation may be out of ignorance of the moral law, a lack of love for their Creator, or sometimes even a perverse desire to drag good people down into their immoral swamp. That’s between them and God. But we who find ourselves necessarily exposed to their lying tongues can be tempted…
When this kind of choice is placed in our path, we must stop and think. This is no longer an innocent choice between buying a blue dress or a red dress. Now it is a moral choice, when we have to decide whether to defy God’s will and offend him, or to keep our souls clean and white, preserving our innocence and making sure we stay on the side of righteousness. How many times a day are we given such choices as these? Believe it or not, they number in the hundreds. From the moment we wake up in the morning, then every few minutes for the rest of the day, we are forced to choose between right and wrong. Should I hit the snooze button on the alarm clock and be late to work? Should I eat a healthy breakfast or just grab a handful of cheezits? Are the clothes I’m wearing modest? Am I driving too fast? Did I say my morning prayers?
Now I’m not saying we should go through life in paranoia, trembling about every little thing we do. But it’s not a bad thing perhaps to give a little boost to our awareness that it’s all about choices, and in particular about making the right choices when it comes to right or wrong. Once we are more aware, we can then improve our decision-making further, going from the merely satisfactory, to better and better, always aiming at perfection. It’s a goal we’ll never quite make, but it’s worth the effort to try because it’s on that effort that God will judge us.
Today’s Epistle gives us a quick and easy key to success in making those efforts bear fruit. “Whatsoever ye do,” says St. Paul, “whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” If we can make every tiny little moral decision we face during the course of the day “in the name of the Lord” we can surely do no wrong. And what better way to ensure we do everything in the name of the Lord than by making the sign of the Cross before everything we do, saying to ourselves, “I choose to do this” (whatever it is) “in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.” Let’s try and make this a deliberate and thoughtful reaction to any moral choice we’re given, summoning up the blessed Trinity to bear witness to what we decide. How could we possibly do this and then deliberately opt for some thought, word or deed that we know would offend almighty God?
And let’s not dream up any excuses about making the sign of the Cross in public. We don’t have to make a pretentious display—simply tracing a small cross on our heart will be enough. Even just thinking the words will put us in the right frame of mind to avoid offending the Holy Trinity we invoke.
Our path through life might not always be a treelined avenue along which we innocently meander. Often our path leads us through the thick forest where we have to claw our way through thorns and briars. But if we have trained ourselves in the good times to make that sign of the Cross before every moral step we take, we’ll find that when the going gets tough, we’ll instinctively turn to that same Cross and know what to do. “Whatsoever ye do in word and deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father through Jesus Christ our Lord.”