SPIRITUAL MAPQUEST: TEN SIGNPOSTS TO HEAVEN

What is the quickest, easiest, most efficient path to arrive at my destination? Response! Checkout MapQuest on line! After “Googling” in, bingo! There it is and as simple as a few clicks on the computer.  The colored map, the back-streets and Highways to take, North, South, East or West! Not only the quickest route but also, the mileage and the precise time it takes to arrive at my destination!  Wow!  What a time-saver over the famous “Thomas Map”, used far and wide for many years!  If followed correctly, the end result will be safe arrival, home-sweet-home!

Now, “Spiritual-MapQuest”!   What, you may ask???   Response!  Arriving safe and sound in New York or Manila or Rome, or the City of Mexico is the purpose of MapQuest.  Then, should we not be even more concerned at arriving at our eternal destiny?  St. Ignatius of Loyola in Principle and Foundation paves the way for us, giving  the destiny of our “Spiritual MapQuest” in these simple but profound words:  “Man is created to praise God, reverence God, serve God and by means of that to save his soul.”   The classical catechism put it in these concise but penetrating words:  “We are here to know God, love God, and serve God in this life so as to be with Him forever in heaven.”

What then is this “Spiritual MapQuest” and the various roads, routes, freeways, possible detours that we must take to get to heaven?    The response:  THE TEN COMMANDMENTS!  Jesus states very clearly that He loves the Father, that he loves all of us and every one of us individually. Still more He does not want to limit His relationship to us in terms of slavery, but in FRIENDSHIP.   He said at the Last Supper, “I call you friends because the slave does not know what the Master is doing but you do!”. However, Jesus intervenes specifying how indeed we can be His friends, and it is by obeying the Commandments.

He said,  “Not all those who say ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of God, but those who do the will of my Father.” Jesus is indeed our model in deed and Word and he said, “My food is to do the will of my Heavenly Father.”

 For many today the moral-compass has been totally lost!  As Pope Pius XII asserted more than 60 years ago:  “The sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.”

Every follower of Jesus Christ has the moral obligation to work on the formation of one’s conscience.   Parents must form the conscience of their children. Parents must strive on forming their own consciences. Priests must preach and teach from the pulpit and in the context of catechetical formation meetings the formation of the conscience by explaining with the utmost clarity the Ten Commandments, the way to observe them, and the means of grace empowering the person to live out the commandments.

The Ten Commandments takes us back to Moses in the Old Testament. He received the ten Commandments on the top of the mountain after praying and fasting for forty days and forty nights. Upon descending and seeing the people who had fallen into the practice of idolatry, by worshiping the golden calf, infuriated Moses broke the tablets on which were written the ten commandments, pulverized the golden calf and  cast the  remains in a near water-body.  Then Moses returned for the commandments again!

What then are the Ten Commandments and what is the order in which this “Spiritual MapQuest” should be engraved in our memory?

Here then is the list! If not memorized yet, let us engrave these in our memories, teach our children these commandments and above all strive with the help of God’s grace to put them into practice so that indeed we can truly be the friends of Jesus, remembering His words:  “If you love me keep my commandments.”  Calling to mind also the words of the great teacher, catechist,  Pope John Paul II, in his document on catechism, “Catechesis Tradendae” that we have to go back to memorizing the basics of our catholic faith. Of course one of the basic building blocks of the Catholic-Christian faith is the Ten Commandments.  Here is your SPIRITUAL MAPQUEST TO HEAVEN!

1.        I, the Lord, am your God. You shall not have other gods besides me.

2.        You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain.

3.        Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day.

4.        Honor your father and your mother.

5.        You shall not kill.

6.        You shall not commit adultery.

7.        You shall not steal.

8.        You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

9.        You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.

10.    You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Therefore, we know clearly our eternal destiny—to be united with God forever one day in heaven.  There is no pursuit more important in our lives than to place all of the energy of our will, all the keenness of our intellect, all the time at our disposal to attain this goal.

You now have your “Spiritual MapQuest” and it has ten directions that must be followed and they are the Ten Commandments. If by chance, we make a wrong turn, run into a detour on the way, run over a nail or sharp glass on the way puncturing a tire or even go North when we should have been going South, we can always “Re-route”, readjust by stopping at the Spiritual Repair shop known as the confessional, get new oil, gassed up, a new set of tires, a new frame if needed and then once again return to the highway that leads to heaven!

Mary has many beautiful titles. Star of the Sea, morning star, star of the New Evangelization, the moon that precedes the sun, and in Spanish, “Santa Maria del Camino”—meaning,   Holy Mary of the way.  She can lead us to the true “Way,” Jesus Christ, who is “The WAY,   the Truth, and the Life! 

Below is a verbal explanation of  this  article on "Spiritual MapQuest". Listen and learn!