God’s Law Written on Our Hearts:
Choosing Good and Avoiding Evil
By Leota Roesch
“Only God can answer the question about the good, because he is the Good. But God has already given an answer to this question: he did soby creating man and ordering himwith wisdom and love to his final end, through the law which is inscribed in his heart (cf.Rom2:15), the ‘natural law’. The latter ‘is nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man at creation’.” (John Paul II quoting Aquinas in Veritas Splendor, # 12)
Purpose
This session helps participants understand the “origin” of Natural Law and its role in living a Gospel life. This session is designed for high school youth and will work with groups from 10-60 participants.
Component: Catechesis
Correlation to the U.S. Bishops’ Adaptation: Course 6 B: God Teaches us How to Live our Lives in Christ (Catechism of the Catholic Church #’s 1954, 1955, 1956, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1979, 1713)
Session at a Glance
7:00 p.m. Welcome, Introduction, Prayer
7:10 p.m. Focusing Activity | Naming Life Experience: Choices, Choices,
Choices: Making Them, Reflecting on Them
Extend the Session: Movies Offer Moral Choices (add 20 minutes)
7:25 p.m. Sharing the Faith Message: What’s It All about? Law, Conscience,
and Reason
8:00 p.m. Integrating the Faith Message: Reflection
8:05 p.m. Living the Faith Message: Closing Prayer
8:20 p.m. Announcements and Refreshments
8:30 p.m. Good Night!
Materials Needed
· Nametags, if needed, one for each participant
· Small table covered with a nice cloth, candle, cross or crucifix as focal point, Bible, matches or lighter
· Masking tape or string to mark off the room for the Focusing Activity as well as two extra chairs
· Resource 1, CCC References, copy for the session leader
· Handout 1, Closing Prayer, one for each participant
Extend the Session: Movies Offer Moral Choices
· Resource 2, Movies Offer Moral Choices
· Movie DVD (select from Resource 2)
· DVD player (or computer) and LCD projector, speakers/sound system
Prepare in Advance
1. As part of the introduction to the session, consider preparing a brief (one to two minute) story to share with the participants about an early experience of recognizing right from wrong. This simply allows the youth to realize that they are not the first to have these experiences…they are not alone or unique in that way.
2. Consider inviting a participant to be the prayer leader for the opening and closing prayer. Invite a participant to proclaim the Scripture reading in the opening prayer.
3. Prepare the prayer space using the materials mentioned above.
4. In the front of the room, place two empty chairs at opposite ends from each other. Dividing the space between them, mark of a spot with masking tape that is the center of the two ends. Divide each of the “halves” in two again with one marking near the chairs at each end and one between that mark and the center marking.
5. Set up tables and chairs for small group work. Set up tables for refreshments and sign-in. Have one or two people at the sign-in table with a check-in sheet and nametags. Hospitality is important: As the leader, do not use the gathering time before the session begins to take care of last-minute preparations. Spend the time moving among the participants, greeting and speaking with them.
(Optional) Extend the Session
6. There are films worth watching for their serious and inspiring treatment of moral themes, or because characters face moral challenges and rise above them.Using Resource 2, Movies Offer Moral Choices, choose one or more of these movies or another/others more familiar to your group. Having made your choices and watched them beforehand, set up the scenes for them where the moral choice is set out or is about to be made. Set up the DVD player or computer, LCD projector, and sound system. Cue the movie to the scene you will use.
Session Outline
Welcome and Introduction and Prayer (10 minutes)
Welcome the participants and provide this introduction for the beginning of tonight’s session:
Take a moment and go back into your memory to a time when you were a small child. (Pause) Now think of a time when you thought of doing something, or did something that you knew was wrong. (Pause) Right now, it doesn’t matter if you did or did not do the thing that was “wrong.”
Now, answer this question for yourself: How did I “know” that it was wrong? Even if my mother or father told me it was wrong, did I know it anyway for myself? How?
(Pause)
Most of us, from early on in our lives, know what’s right and wrong. (Consider sharing a brief story at this point.)
The HOW of our knowing something is right or wrong from an early age is what we’re going to talk about tonight.
From the Scriptures and early theologians who contemplated them, from ancient philosophers and early civilizations, we know “in our hearts” what is right and wrong for us to do. And, as Christians, we believe this is so, because God put the law in our hearts. We are going to learn more about this “natural law” tonight, how we come to know it and to exercise it.
Now let us focus our attention on our prayer environment, taking a few deep cleansing breaths calling on the Holy Spirit to calm our minds and bodies and begin our prayer.
Prayer Leader: (begin with the Sign of the Cross)
Loving God,
You always help your people find the right way.
Open our hearts and
Guide us to listen so that we may know you better.
We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Let us listen carefully to a Proclamation from Paul’s Letter to the Romans. In this small piece from Romans, we get a sense of what the Jewish people and the early Christians already knew about the “law in their hearts.”
Invite the reader to proclaim Romans 2:3, 12-16. Allow a few moments of quiet reflection.
Respond
Ask each person to think of a word or phrase that stood out for them in the reading; invite them to say that word aloud. When all have finished, continue with the closing prayer.
Go Forth
Prayer Leader:
Gracious God,
You have given us the gift of making choices and decisions about our lives. Tonight we come to learn more about how our choices reflect our relationship with you. Help us make the connection between good living and strong relationship with you and others. In your name, we pray. Amen.
Focusing Activity and Naming Life Experience: Choices, Choices, Choices (15 minutes)
Invite the participants to stand and gather/cluster around the masking tape marking the center of the area blocked off in the front of the room. Then say:
In this activity, we are going to experience making moral choices. While I know it is tempting to follow your peers as they decide, I am asking that you make your own choices.
I am going to give you a scenario, and when I have finished reading it, I want you to decide if the action taken was right or wrong. If the action is right, move towards your right; if wrong, move towards your left. You can move as far as you wish in either direction, depending on how right or wrong you think the action was [or how strongly you feel about your decision], or you can stay in the center if you are undecided or unsure, but I encourage you to make a choice.
If someone has something to say concerning his/her choice, she may move to the “talking chair” at either end of the spectrum. Because of time constraints, no more than two people per scenario will be allowed to speak. I am going to ask you to move immediately after I finish speaking.
Scenario 1: Two friends (or acquaintances) have confided to you that they found a very expensive media system with surround sound, 64” HD TV, BlueRay player, MP3 player docking system, etc. and knowing you’ve been saving your money for just such a thing, offer it to you for $100.
Wait while the participants move to the right or left. If a few participants risk the “talking chairs,” after they have expressed their opinions, open it to the group for one or two minutes to respond. If no one has shared anything, invite them to go back to their seats and ask them open-ended questions such as:
· Why were you sure your decision was right or wrong?
· If you didn’t go all the way to either end of the spectrum (really right or really wrong), why weren’t you sure enough to do so?
· What did you base your decision on? What did you take in to consideration in making your decision?
· Can anyone share one scenario, perhaps not so “clear” of something that someone your age would have to make a decision about just as part of his/her daily life?
Continue this process for the remaining scenarios.
(Re-gather in the Center) Scenario 2: The situation remains the same, but they tell you they have taken it from the home of someone in their neighborhood who just purchased it.
(Re-gather in the Center) Scenario 3: The situation remains the same except for this: They took it from a VERY wealthy home, and knowing you’ve been saving your money for just such a thing, offer it to you at less than half of what you would have to pay for it retail.
(Optional) Movies Offer Moral Choices (20 minutes)
Have the movie cued up to play. Give a brief introduction to the movie so that the participants understand the scene they will watch.
When the scene is finished, ask the participants to form groups of three and ask to share on the following, giving them one question at a time:
· Have you seen this movie before? Even if you haven’t seen the movie, how did you FEEL when you viewed the scene/s I just played?
· What were you THINKING as the protagonist spoke?
· What CHOICE was being asked of the person/people in the scene?
· How did the character/s make the choice? That is, what was the basis on which the choice was made?
· What do you think of the choice that was made or being contemplated?
· What, if anything, would you have said, done, chosen differently?
· Was the choice made, do you think, one that you could say was based on the teaching of Jesus, whether or not “Jesus” language was used?
Sharing the Faith Message: What’s It All About? Law, Conscience, and Reason (35 minutes)
God’s Law in Us
From the exercise that we just completed and the discussion we had, seemingly human beings have an innate sense of right and wrong, an innate sense of the way they ought to behave. This sense is called the natural (moral) law. It is God’s law literally written on our hearts, woven into the very fabric of who we are, as we just heard in the proclamation from Paul’s letter to the Romans: “Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Romans 3:20). Paul maintains that this law is so clearly evident in the universe that humanity has no excuse for wrongdoing.
Was this just something Paul thought up? Was this idea of a “natural law” that aids us in living a moral life just part of the Jewish thought and faith he was formed in? No, the idea that there were immutable laws that govern our actions and that these laws are “in our bones” goes much farther back than Paul. We can even go back to Ancient Rome and Greece to see that that is so.
· The Roman thinker Cicero gives us the classic description of natural moral law: “True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it.”
· Socrates believed that the concept of law is an objective standard to be discovered (rather than created) by lawmakers.
· Plato believed that all humans can discern what is good/right/true by using reason.
· Aristotle believed that humans are rational beings and that the law is in us as a requirement of reason.
The Old and New Testaments, the writings of Christian theologians, and documents of the Church, however, tell us that this law is integrated into our humanity by our Creator God, and thus, it is of divine origin. It is the basis of our right relationships, our actions, and our service. It has the force of “law” because it comes from God. For example:
· St. Augustine says “Natural law is the light of understanding placed in us by God through which we know what we must do and what we must avoid.”
· St. Thomas Aquinas, in his writings, tells us that natural law is an objective, eternal moral order of Divine origin. It is “nothing else than the rational creature’s participation in the eternal law” (Summa).
· Quoting St. Thomas, Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical, Veritas Splendor, defined Natural Law as “the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided.”
We believe, and can see, that the natural divine law is the basis of the Ten Commandments (CCC 1955). If we look carefully at these statutes set out for us in the Book of Exodus, we can see that they name actions to avoid that are harmful to individuals and to the community. Before we even “learned” the Ten Commandments by heart, we would be able to know that murder, lying, stealing, disobedience, envy, etc. are all wrong and contrary to our living a life that will lead us to God.