“Consider how I love thy precepts! Preserve my life according to thy steadfast love.” (Ps 119:159)
God’s holy commandments are life. To move within them means to live in the favor of our Father. They are instructions that God, in His goodness, has given so that we may not perish in the turmoil of this world or fall prey to evil. We need only look at them individually to recognize that they were given to us with great wisdom. When our Father gives us as the first commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Mt 22:37), then the most essential thing has already been said to us.
Love for our Father directs our heart to the foundation of our existence, for this is why He called us into life. In this way, we discover the primordial source of all that constitutes life. When we respond by keeping His commandment, this primordial source becomes alive for us and flows into our hearts as love. Through this, our love is awakened ever more deeply, and we can say to the Lord—like the psalmist—that we love His statutes.
It would be too little to regard the Lord’s commandments and statutes merely as guardrails or as protection against falling into darkness. They are far more, for they are inscribed in our hearts. Thus, at the moment of creation, our Father already gave His creature its fundamental orientation and fulfillment within. But since we often almost forget this inscription, He reminds us of it through His holy commandments.
St. Francis de Sales also points us toward the right understanding of the commandments: “Some regard God’s commandments as a medicine to be swallowed so as not to fall into eternal death, instead of rejoicing that in them we have a guide for shaping our lives according to the Savior’s good pleasure.”