THROUGH UNTRUE
During Senate hearings, witnesses respectfully address legislators as “Your Honor.” I often wonder whether our senators are familiar with the Latin saying Honor est in honorante, which means that the source and measure of honor lie in the person who bestows it, not in the one who receives it.
If our government leaders are addressed as “Your Honor,” they should remember that this mark of respect is directed, not to their own person, but to the sacred office entrusted to them by the people. Like everyone else, public officials cannot demand honor as though it were theirs by right. The most they can do is to live in such a way that they deserve it.
The Bible teaches us a radically different understanding of honor. Every human being is inherently honorable because we are created in the image and likeness of God, the source of all honor and dignity. Although sin has disfigured that divine image in us, Christ restored it through His saving grace.
This is affirmed in the Second Reading of today’s Mass: “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. How much more then, since we are now justified by his blood...” (Romans 5:8–9). St. John expresses the same truth in even more moving words: “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1).
Indeed, we are inherently honorable because we bear within us the splendor of God's own image. The tragedy is that we often fail to nurture this divine gift, and instead allow sin to disfigure that sacred image. Worse still, we are gradually erasing the very notion of sin from our moral consciousness, replacing it with psychological and legal terms to minimize its destructive power.
The Wall Street Journal once lamented this disturbing reality in one of its editorials: "Nowadays, people no longer talk, think, or worry about sin. But sin is important because it provides a framework for personal behavior. When this framework was dismantled, guilt, personal accountability, and shame vanished as well."
How true! Haven't you noticed how mainstream media and the internet often portray convicted criminals and those accused of heinous offenses as showing little or no visible sign of remorse, sense of accountability or shame? Some are treated almost like celebrities, escorted by a phalanx of security personnel who shield them from reporters and curious onlookers. Others are even granted press conferences where they boldly proclaim, “Don't judge me. Let the court decide whether I am guilty or not.”
To give judicial courts the supreme authority to determine one's guilt is to confuse sin with crime. A crime is adjudicated in a court of law, where a judge or jury renders a verdict based on the evidence presented. Yet it is common knowledge that many guilty individuals are acquitted, not because they are innocent, but because their shrewd lawyers succeed in casting doubt on the evidence or exploiting procedural loopholes.
When sin is reduced to nothing more than a legal offense, moral responsibility is diminished as well. It is no surprise, then, that even those convicted by judicial courts still feign innocence in public, prompting people to ask, “Don't they have a conscience?”
Conscience is not just an internal alarm that sounds when we do wrong. To borrow the image from today's Gospel, conscience is like a shepherd who gently guides his sheep (Matthew 9:36). Conscience directs our actions, intentions, aspirations, and hidden desires to what is true and good. It warns us before we stray and calls us back when we commit sin. It is a trustworthy moral compass when it is continually formed by prayer and obedience to God’s commands, and enlightened by the teachings of the Church.
Conscience safeguards the honor that God Himself has graciously bestowed upon us. But when its voice is repeatedly silenced, we act like wayward sheep, justifying what is wrong and sinful. When that happens, we cease to be truly honorable, even if the whole world continues to address us as “Your Honor.”
