Precept and counsel, need and desire

 The strictures of today's gospel about how to go about preaching the gospel are so severe, one might be excused for feeling a little discouraged. "Carry no purse, no haversack, no sandals", is it, Lord? Well, we reason, maybe that works in Late Iron Age Palestine but spare a thought for twenty-first century Britain! But that would be wrong for at least three reasons. 

The first is that as we read the Scriptures, we should know that, at times, Jesus does use hyperbole when He speaks. Most of us probably understand that instinctively. Those who don't have already chopped off their hands or dug out their eyes in order to obey Jesus' command about what to do if we sin by hand or eye. Not all Jesus' apparent exaggerations can be attributed to hyperbole, like the number of times we must forgive. But others - like "Call no man 'Father' - fit that category precisely. Jesus' order here about no purse, no haversack and no sandals is a command about simplicity and bare minimum necessities, more than an order about the disciples' fashions.

The second reason it would be wrong is because it would depend on a fundamental confusion between precept and counsel, between a command and a better way. So much trouble comes to us by confusing these two things. For the habitual sinner, it seems easy to think that precept (a command) is merely a counsel, a piece of advice but not an obligation. Jesus cannot really mean that, can He? He said He came to make us free after all!

On the other hand, for those who have made a little more progress in the spiritual life, the opposite is true: they can easily confuse counsel for precept. In Jesus' day, it was the Pharisees who were perhaps most guilty of this, but it is a vice that can afflict those who are a lot nicer than the Pharisees. We see this when people become zealous about some devotion or other, and act as if they have been called to spread it through the whole world. Those who mistake counsel for precept become merchants of religious enthusiasm, not understanding that enthusiasm in a religious key is a kind of lack of freedom. It wants to draw its power from passion, and not from grace; it instinctively puffs itself up into a feel-good fuzziness (or perhaps a feel-righteous fuzziness) instead of waiting for the breath of the Holy Spirit. It would take those words of Jesus about going without sandals and purse and turn them into a hammer to crush the weakness of lesser Christians. Those who mistake counsel for precept are the spiritual Marthas of this life who are unwittingly anxious about many things, whereas they believe they are the ones serving the Lord with all their busyness. Yet they miss the one thing necessary; they lack the simplicity of Mary.

Which brings us nicely to the third reason why we cannot just overlook these words of Jesus: they are meant to help us discern between what it is we want and what it is we really need. We need many things in this life, as our Father in Heaven knows, but what we want and the way in which we want them can come between us and our following of Christ. We are right to deny the abusiveness of the religious enthusiasts who want to turn counsels into precepts and place on our shoulders the burdens of their enthusiasms. And yet, if we do not distinguish rightly between our needs and our desires, we are likely to remain just as worldly as those who do not profess to follow Jesus. Our legitimate freedoms can become our seductions. We can believe we are good for our occasional penances, whereas God might look on our indulgences as so many acts of betrayal because to those to whom much is given, much is rightly expected. Our simplicity can become an oversimplification or simply naivety, especially about our lower passions and their entrapments. Jesus told us to take up our cross, and that too is a precept. 

The challenge is that some counsels do indeed become precepts. We are all called to poverty, chastity and obedience, but if we take a vow to embrace them, they become precepts to us (understanding that chastity is fundamentally always a matter of precept in its essence). Yet in another way, counsel may become precept by some inspiration or perhaps through our own personal vocations which the Holy Spirit gives us to understand. This is when we must listen so carefully to the Holy Spirit and pray to discern His commands with wisdom. 

In the end, whether we are among the seventy-two disciples sent out or those who remain behind to hold the fort and pray for them, we need all to know the difference between precept and counsel, to abstain from placing our own burdens on the shoulders of others, and to watch closely that our freedoms do not become an excuse for waywardness. And then, our first words will always be, "Peace be to this house."