Knowing is Half the Battle

November 15, 2008.

“Then Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.'” Luke 24:34

Of all the messages of mercy in Scripture, this, to me, is the clearest, most succinct, and greatest source of hope. There are so many people in this world who do not know Christ. Some have heard His story, and have dismissed it as impossible or irrelevant. The cause of evangelization certainly is not helped by the confusion and discord within Christianity. How much of this comes from our ignorance of Jesus and his commandments? And while those who know the truth are obligated to teach, admonish, and bring others into a fuller understanding of the gospel, we are given no room to judge the ignorant and those who, in seeking truth, are misled, deceived, or otherwise brought to a path that does not bring them into the fullness of truth. We can pray and hope that even those who deny Jesus may still be saved in His mercy. Praise God for His infinite mercy!

But we must not be complacent. It is so easy to twist this message of mercy into that misguided cliché, “Ignorance is bliss.” I submit that ignorance is death, unless it is an ignorance that seeks knowledge. Augustine proposes that no one sins for the purpose of doing evil. Rather, sin is a result of a distorted view of what is good. We see wine as a drug that makes us feel good for a while, not as a drink. We see women as objects, a means to sexual release, not as a divinely and perfectly created masterpiece in the image of God, whose beauty must be honored and protected. The more we remain in ignorance, the more we become blind to the greatest goods, to the treasures and beautiful things. Wine, in Scripture, is a symbol of the Spirit, because He fills us up, makes us drunk and giddy. So wine is a wonderful thing, a foretaste of heaven, and when we see that, it points us heavenward. Women, modeled after Eve, are a type of the Church, the bride of Christ, which is presented to him spotless and pure. When we see that, we see women not for themselves, but creations again that point us toward heaven. And just so with all of creation: “it was very good”. But when we deny creation's divine origin, and it ceases to remind us of the Father and to point us to Him, it becomes for us an occasion of sin. And the more frequently we do this, the more habitual it becomes to see creation through our own eyes rather than God's.

With our darkened understanding of right and wrong, it is impossible to discern through the eyes of God without the Spirit, Who teaches through the Church. Every heart has a law written on it that knows there is right and knows there is wrong. What is crucial is that we recognize that what we believe to be right is not always understood properly, and we must constantly seek the wisdom and understanding to know what is right.

Every heart has a law on it that knows there is right and knows there is wrong. When we choose wrong, we are condemned. When we don't know right, we have hope in God's mercy.

Mother of the Church,
from your immaculate conception you knew God's Mercy. Pray for us, that, by His grace, we may know Him, and become like Him. Teach us the wisdom that gives understanding, that our ignorance may be thrown into the fire, and we may be golden vessels for His Church.