The One Commitment

When the Saints talk about two dimensions of commitment, theological and moral, what they mean is only one dimension. There is no sound life that is not established on the knowledge of God. There is no true knowledge of God that is not translated into our lives on earth. Ethics is an explicit aspect of our belief in “what proceeds from the mouth of God”, that is of this awareness, in the heart and in public, that “we are always living in His Presence”. I am not limiting ethics to one virtue. In our tradition, virtue is all of the virtues. To love God is to love all that He desires for you and from you. In obedience, there is no selectiveness. For example, to be chaste requires that you be faithful to all that the Word says. It requires, for instance, that you believe in the freedom of God’s people; in the peoples’ freedom from the puppets, that is from the tyrants, as described by the Sudanese poet Muhammad Al-Fayturi… This is the good order of Jesus Who said: “whoever does and teaches (these commandments), he shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:19).