One day, while Our Lord Jesus Christ was speaking to His disciples about the truths of Heaven, a young man came up to Him and asked: “Master, what must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus answered: “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” To keep God’s commandments – this is the only path to Heaven. It is therefore important to know what God commands and what He forbids.
The commandments of God are those precepts that He has written in our hearts and that He Himself gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, amid lightning and thunder. They are often called the Decalogue, because they number ten, like the fingers of the hand. Among them, three are expressed positively – the first, the third, and the fourth – while the others are formulated as prohibitions. The first three commandments concern God directly and regulate our conduct toward Him.
The first commandment may be summed up as:
By this commandment – the most important of all – God commands us:
These three first duties correspond to three virtues that we must practice: faith, hope, and charity. They are called the theological virtues, because they have God Himself as their object and direct our whole life toward Him.
Faith is to believe in God and, on His word, to believe all the truths that the Church teaches. We sin against faith when we are ashamed to appear Christian, when we deny Jesus Christ and His religion, or when we reject a truth that the Church proposes as revealed by God.
Hope is to expect from God’s goodness His grace in this life and eternal life in the next. We sin against hope when, relying too much on our own strength, we expose ourselves recklessly to temptation, or when we despair of God’s mercy.
Charity is to love God with all our heart and, for love of Him, to love all people, our brothers and sisters in Christ. We sin against charity when we remain indifferent toward God, or when we harbor hatred or resentment toward our neighbor.
A fourth duty also flows from the first commandment: the duty of worship or adoration. To adore God is to give Him the honor due to Him as Creator and sovereign Lord of all things. We fail in this duty when we neglect morning and evening prayer, when we behave poorly in church, talk, or allow ourselves to be distracted instead of listening to God with reverence.
The second commandment is expressed as:
By this commandment, God forbids us:
To swear in vain – that is, to invoke God as a witness without reason, as though His holy name were meant to support our whims or anger.
To blaspheme – that is, to speak words of insult against God or the Saints.
Using the name of God in curses is a very grave blasphemy. When we hear someone blaspheme, it is praiseworthy to say in our hearts, in reparation: “Blessed be Jesus Christ!”
The third commandment is stated as follows:
This commandment requires us to sanctify Sunday, the day of the Lord. We sin against it when we neglect to attend Mass without serious reason, or when we devote this day – meant for God and for rest – to forbidden work or to activities that draw us away from prayer.
In the heart of the winter of 1867, the cold raged across the Polish countryside. Snow blocked the roads, and the trees stood dark against the horizon. Not far from a village, a young shepherd of about twelve was gathering dead wood at the edge of a forest. He held his bundle close and breathed on his frozen fingers.
Suddenly, a patrol of Russian soldiers appeared around the bend in the road. They surrounded him, laughed, and questioned him.
“What is your religion?” one of them asked.
The boy lifted his head.
“I am Catholic,” he replied firmly.
The officer frowned. He hated Catholicism. He ordered the boy to renounce his faith. The young shepherd refused. Slowly, with the seriousness of one who knows its worth, he made the sign of the Cross several times.
Anger flared.
“If you do not renounce your Catholic faith, you will be shot.”
He was led to a hedge and tied to a tree. The soldiers stepped back, raised their rifles, and took aim. The boy turned pale, but his eyes remained calm. He whispered a final prayer before the guns pointed at his chest.
Suddenly, the officer raised his hand.
“Lower your weapons. This wretched boy is not worth the powder we would waste. We will hang him instead, if he does not renounce his faith.”
They untied him and dragged him to a great oak tree. A rope was slipped around his neck.
“Will you finally renounce your religion?” the officer demanded.
The son of Catholic Poland remained silent, then slowly shook his head.
“Never,” the child answered. “Never will I abandon my mother’s religion.”
A soldier climbed the tree and fastened the rope to a thick branch. Two others lifted the boy to let him fall into the noose that would strangle him. Again, the cruel officer intervened, swearing with rage:
“This miserable boy is not even worth the rope – it is new! It will be simpler to drown him.”
They untied the poor victim. The brutal troop, laughing, headed toward a frozen pond about a hundred meters away. The sky was heavy, the fields white, the wind biting.
At the water’s edge, two soldiers stepped onto the ice and struck it with axes until they opened a dark hole in the frozen surface. The boy’s clothes were torn off, and he was pushed naked into the icy water. Soon, only his head remained above the broken ice.
Then the officer, followed by two men, stepped out onto the pond and stopped a few paces from the child.
“Well then, you little wretch,” he said with a cruel laugh, “will you still refuse to renounce your religion?”
Night was beginning to fall over the fields. The boy’s face was numbed by the cold, his lips trembling, his hands nearly frozen. Yet his eyes shone with a heavenly hope.
Without answering the officer, he raised his gaze to Heaven. Then, gathering his strength, he lifted his half-frozen arm above the water and, for the last time, made the sign of the Cross that his mother had taught him.
At that very moment, a cracking sound split the silence. The ice, weakened by the blows of the axe and weighed down by the three men, suddenly gave way. The officer and his two companions were swallowed by the dark, icy water. The pond closed over them. On the broken surface of the ice, there was only a brief disturbance – then stillness.
The soul of the little martyr had already left the snows of Poland and risen toward Heaven.