Rules can be helpful—if we know what they’re for

A Reflection for the Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and evangelist

Find today’s readings here.

One of the largest gatherings of Catholics in the United States every year is the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, held every year at the Anaheim Convention Center (until 2028, when it will move to the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center). In addition to workshops, talks and Masses held in the many different languages spoken in Southern California, participants can also explore a massive exhibit floor occupied by publishers, educational institutions, renewal programs, religious orders, vendors of religious art, ministry resource professionals and more. In the years before Covid, organizers estimated the crowds at over 40,000 people. Partly because of the location and partly because of the overwhelming crowds of Catholics of every stripe—“here comes everyone,” as James Joyce once wrote of our motley church—some have dubbed it “Catholic Disneyland.”

I attended the Congress every year when I worked as an editor at Orbis Books, selling our publications and meeting with authors old and new. It is a fruitful celebration of American Catholicism in all its beauty. It also maintains a firm “keep Catholicism weird” vibe. And for me, it had the added bonus that it was a great chance to reunite with old friends and make new ones. One year, I was part of a large group of writers and editors (one a priest in a Roman collar) who went for lunch at the nearby Hilton. In the commotion—the lobby restaurant was teeming with people—and the excitement of reunions, we completely forgot what day it was.

We were reminded by a woman who approached our table after our food had been served. She leaned in. “Father, I cannot believe you,” she said to the priest. “Meat on a Friday in Lent?!” After her triumphant departure, we all looked at each other: What to do now? Should he throw the rest of his cheeseburger away? Eat it in front of a now-gawking crowd of Catholic onlookers?

I’m not going to tell you what he did, because it is of course none of your business any more than it was hers. But the Gospel passage from Matthew in today’s readings reminded me of that moment—and of the complicated rules and expectations we have of each other, codified in mandates whose well-intended purpose can become something else.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s fine to eat meat on Lenten Fridays (a capybara, maybe). And there is certainly a time and place for fraternal correction. But Matthew’s account of Jesus dining with the tax collector and other sinners raised another question for me in the aftermath of the Great Cheeseburger Apostasy: What are the rules for?

The rules are there to help us to be holy, to bring us closer to God. We follow them because the church teaches us that they are important, and because we hold them to be true—but also because many generations before us, and many people wiser than we, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, helped craft them. They did so for one purpose: to help us in our relationship with Christ. 

Pope John Paul II said as much in his 1983 revision of canon law. We should follow that new code of rules, he wrote, so that “the salvation of souls may be rendered ever easier under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church.” 

That’s it, that’s the point of the rules: the salvation of souls.

The rules are not there because our salvation depends on rules. It most certainly does not. They are there to help us find God. And there is no more eloquent reminder of that than the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel: “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Follow the rules. They’re there to help us, sick as we all are, in one way or another. But remember the rules aren’t God. He sent his Son not to gather in the righteous, but to gather in all of us sinners.

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