God constantly speaks within us, through the conscience which, in the service of the moral law, points us in the right direction. Our problem consists in having our ears ready to accept God’s voice.
Newsroom (Gaudium Press) Shortly after Pentecost, an Ethiopian minister, an educated man, on his way back to his country from Jerusalem, was reading the prophet Isaiah. When he met St. Philip and was asked if he understood what he had read, the Ethiopian replied, “How can I, if there is no one to explain it to me?” (Acts 8:31).
Like him, we all need to be instructed, especially about eternal truths. For this, God appointed his Son as Teacher, and never ceased to raise up, both in the Old and New Testaments, providential souls who preached conversion to men (cf. Luke 16:29): Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, the deacon Philip, St. Paul… Since then, and until today, there will always be someone on earth destined to affirm before the world that “there is a God in Israel” (II Kgs 1:3). Moreover, God constantly speaks to us from within, through our conscience which, in the service of the moral law, points us in the right direction.
Truth, therefore, is always presented to us. Therefore, our problem consists in having our ears ready to accept God’s voice.
Not to do so is the worst disgrace. Besides causing us to fall into sin, warping our mind and rotting our heart, closing our ears to this voice distorts the conscience that God has placed in our soul to keep us from the wrong path. Without the resource to carefully review each step, checking it against God’s will, the deviation only tends to increase. The soul, given over to its own subjectivity, gradually loses its sense of direction toward eternity, and even denies that there is a right course and a wrong one, under the pretext of “following its conscience”.
Now, conscience is not the last instance of moral law, but only an aid to bring our will into harmony with God’s will (cf. St. John Paul II, Dominum et vivificantem, n.43). To deform it by sinning is equivalent to acting like the captain of a ship who alters his compass to mark the direction he desires. The reefs, however, will not change their position. And, barring a miracle, the ship will eventually capsize, just as the man who has guided his course on earth by the compass of his own “moral law” will capsize before the Judgment of God. “Do not want to twist God’s will to accommodate it to your own,” teaches St. Augustine, “but correct yours to accommodate it to God’s will” (Enarratio in psalmum CXXIV, n.2).
Therefore, if conversion consists in putting the Word of God into practice (cf. Mt 7:21), it is necessary, first of all, to have the ear of the heart open to hear it. And, in doing so, to know how to distinguish whether it comes from the Shepherd or from the thief (cf. Jn 10:1-5), whether it belongs to Christ or to the devil.
“My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me,” says Jesus (Jn 10:27). There are sheep, then, who listen to the word of other “shepherds”. After all, the will of man always remains free… even to forge his own disgrace.
Text extracted from the magazine Heralds of the Gospel, No. 202, January 2015.
Compiled by Camille Mittermeier
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