(Fifteenth Sunday of the Year (C): This homily was given on July 15, 2001 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Luke 10: 25-37.)

"Tolstoy’s Horse And The Commandments Of God."

In today’s Gospel text from Luke 10, we are given the two great commandments: "You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself."

These two commandments encapsulate the Decalogue (i.e., the Ten Commandments), the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount (found in Matthew 5, 6, and 7), as well as all the other moral dictates of our Catholic faith—from those concerning economic justice, to those dealing with the immorality of artificial contraception. All of that (believe it or not) is implicitly included in these two simple, straightforward commands.

If ever we are tempted to think that God has given us these moral norms to make our lives miserable and ruin our fun; if ever we’re tempted to believe that our Lord is a cruel master who gets his kicks out of imposing arbitrary rules on us—if we are ever tempted to believe either one of those lies, we should immediately call to mind "Tolstoy’s horse."

If we think of Tolstoy’s horse, the truth will once again become clear to us: we will realize that God is our loving Father who gives us his law so that we will reap good fruit here and in eternity.

Pope John Paul I, who was pope for 33 days back in 1978 (remember him?), wrote the following about this unfortunate animal:

The great Tolstoy wrote of a horse which, halfway down a slope, rebelled and reared up, saying, "I’m tired of pulling the carriage and of obeying the driver. I’m stopping!" He was quite free to do so, but it was to cost him dearly. From that moment on, in fact, all turned against him: the driver whipped him, the coach slammed into his legs, the passengers in the coach yelled and cursed.

So it goes. When we take the wrong road and rebel against God, we overturn order; we break the pact of alliance with the Lord; we renounce his love; we become irritated with ourselves, discontent with what we have done, gnawed by remorse.

Yes, sin becomes, willy-nilly, the master of the sinner. Perhaps at first it pays him compliments and caresses him, but the sinner remains its slave and sooner or later will get a taste of the whip.

Which brings us to the questions of the day: Is Tolstoy’s horse living inside of us? And if he is, isn’t it about time we got rid of him with a good Confession?

 

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