Romans 7:18-25 / Luke 12:54-59
All of us have a conscience and it would be helpful to know how it is described:
- the inner sense of what is right or wrong in one's conduct or motives, and directing one towards right action
- the combination of ethical and moral principles that controls or inhibits the actions or thoughts of an individual.
- an inhibiting sense of what is right and good
As much as the above definitions of conscience tell us what it is, they do not tell us how the conscience is formed or where it comes from.
And if we go by the principle of acting according to conscience, then there will be a situation of two persons acting according to conscience and yet the resultant actions may not be the same.
In the gospel, Jesus asked a rather seemingly simple question - Why not judge for yourselves what is right?
We may know what is the right and good thing to do, but knowing is one thing, and doing it is another.
As St. Paul says in the 1st reading: "for though the will to do what is good is in me, the performance is not, with the result that instead of doing the good things I want to do, I carry out the sinful things I do not want. When I act against my will, then, it is not my true self doing it, but sin which lives in me."
Sin has distorted and contorted our conscience such that it can become numbed to the wrong and bad things we do.
But we are not just left to our conscience. St. Paul tells us in the 1st reading tells us that Jesus Christ our Lord comes to rescue us and to purify our conscience so that we can conform our will to the will of God.
Then we will be able to do what is good, right and just, and help others to do likewise.