In recent years the Ten Commandments have become an unusual staging ground for various groups within the Church. Some people complain that young Catholics don’t know them off by heart. This position is countered by those who say that rather than being able to recite them we should live them, though it’s hard to see how we can do one without the other. Still, others rightly claim that Jesus summarised them in his new commandments, ‘To love God with all our heart, mind and soul and to love our neighbour as we love ourselves.’

The problem with teaching the Ten Commandments is not what they say, but how they say it. The idea of ‘coveting’ anything, but especially ‘wives, slaves, ox and ass’ are all a bit dated these days.

In an article entitled ‘Preaching to the Modern Pagans’ journalist Bryan Appleyard tells how he interviewed a person who kept quoting them at length. Later he decided to read them for the first time since childhood and he was struck by their insightfulness into the human character. Appleyard thought all the Ten Commandments needed was a makeover so that we can reclaim the power of them.

So by putting some ancient words into the modern vernacular we are exhorted this Sunday to seriousness, facing reality, humility, creating space, respecting age, honesty, and fidelity, and we are bluntly told to stop killing and stealing. There is nothing old fashioned about these challenges. As in other instances, we can see that it’s not what our tradition has to say but the way we say it that can be the problem.

And today’s Gospel tells us of the consequences of moving away from these guiding principles. I think we need to take Jesus’ anger very seriously. Rightly we have emphasised the love and compassion of Jesus over recent decades because for far too long the steadfast love of Christ was under-emphasised. We should never think, however, that it cancels out the anger God feels when he sees an unjust world filled with people who know better and do nothing.

God has given us the Ten Commandments, the Law, the Prophets and Jesus his Son, so that we might know the Way, the Truth and the Life. When we are called to account for how we spent our lives, whom we loved and how we made the world a better place for all, most of us will not be able to plead ignorance. May our Eucharist this Sunday enable us to be mindful of what the Ten Commandments say, but even more may it give us the courage and strength to live them out in a world that needs witnesses to them more than ever.

Richard Leonard SJ is the Director of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting, is a member of the Australian Catholic Media Council and a film critic for all the major Australian Catholic newspapers. He completed a PhD in cinema studies at the University of Melbourne. He lectures in cinema and theology at the Jesuit College of Spirituality and has been a visiting lecturer in Australian cinema at the University of Melbourne, a visiting scholar within the School of Theatre, Film and Television at UCLA and is visiting professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Catholic University, has lectured widely and is the author of numerous books. Richard Leonard SJ