Having a Conscience
The Gospel emphasizes the need to authentically listen to God's words and fulfill them. This is an extremely important principle of our relationship with God - the principle of the sine qua non (an essential condition). Our Lord Jesus emphasizes its importance. If anyone hears his words and fulfills them, he will stand, that is, he will have a share in his kingdom. Without listening to Jesus' words and taking them seriously, one cannot enter his kingdom.
Usually, when such a statement is made, someone asks the question: what about those who do not know Jesus Christ because they lived before him or were born where no one knows anything about him? The given rule of course applies to those who have heard him. Yet Jesus is the incarnate Logos, God's eternal word that enlightens every human being when he comes into the world (cf. Jn 1: 9). If this dimension is taken into account, the above principle applies to every human being, regardless of when and where he/she lives or has lived.
The Inner Logos is given to us so that we may recognize the truth. The Lord Jesus many times had a grudge against the Jews because they could not recognize that He had come from His Father. These complaints related precisely to the lack of listening to the inner Logos, which, after all, was himself in the incarnation. If the Jews were truly open to their inner voice, they would have recognized the same voice in Him. But they did not hear it, because they drown played it out and invented arguments to suppress that voice. This is the perversity of the heart that the Lord Jesus accuses against his opponents.
There is a similar inner voice in each of us. The decision to adopt it is extremely important. Heidegger wrote: The call of conscience. Virtually everything depends on accepting or rejecting this inner voice. At this point, it is decided on what we build ourselves and our lives: on the voice of conscience, that is, on the word coming from God, or on our own ideas. Our ideas will end in a great fall, as announced by the Lord Jesus.
If we have made this inner decision, we can easily recognize the truth in Jesus' words. Our inner Logos will confirm the words we find in the gospel. If, on the other hand, we have not made such a decision internally, we will very easily fall into a spontaneous desire to confirm our own ideas and imaginations. They will begin to rule over us. Most often it is difficult to notice that these are our own ideas because they seem so obvious and natural. We then need a lot of courage and self-denial to discover this hypocrisy in ourselves. We have to experience our own languishment to enter the path of truth.
In the Old Testament wisdom books, "the fear of God" is spoken of as the beginning of wisdom. It is an inner respect for the voice that resounds delicately in us. The fear of God makes us realize that our life is about something very important, that it is not a random juxtaposition of events in the shape of a kaleidoscope. Our life is, in fact, a deep dialogue with God in which the question of our being or not being is decided. Until we realize the importance of his words, we do not understand their meaning. Only the inner discovery of this importance gives us an insight into the meaning of both our life and the words of God we hear. This is also when the listening and waiting of the Master truly begins.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george