On May 22, Archbishop of Montreal Christian Lépine presided at a special Mass themed "The 'Ten Words': A Path for Life" — a celebration that invited the faithful to rediscover the Ten Commandments not as a catalogue of prohibitions but as a guide to living fully.

In his homily, Archbishop Lépine put a direct question to those gathered: "Do you seek to know God's commandments and to put them into practice?" He noted that the Commandments are rarely spoken of today, even though they remain essential to understanding the vocation and dignity of the human person. The time has come, he said, to take up the question again, in our spiritual lives and in society at large.

The Archbishop acknowledged that many people experience the Commandments as more burdensome than a blessing, or as God's way of keeping human beings in check. He offered a different vision: that of a good God revealing to humanity what truly leads to life.

At the heart of his reflection, Archbishop Lépine turned to the opening chapters of Genesis: "So God created humankind in his image." He called this one of the most revolutionary statements in all of human history. To be made in the image of God means being made to know God, to love God, and to love as God loves, a vocation written into the human heart.

He also drew attention to the context in which the Commandments were first given to Moses. Before any commandment is named, God speaks: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the house of slavery." The Commandments are therefore, first and foremost, a path for remaining free and growing in human dignity. They are not imposed from outside; they speak to what the human person most deeply needs.

To make this concrete, Archbishop Lépine offered a simple comparison: telling someone they must drink water to survive is not a restriction but a fact of human nature. In the same way, the Commandments reveal what human beings are made for. "God's commandments," he said, "are God reminding us of who we are."

Turning to the commandment to honour one's father and mother, he observed that yielding to violence, rejection, or contempt wounds not only others but our own humanity. "When we move away from what we were made for, our humanity is diminished," he said. He invited the faithful to sit with the question: "What kind of person do I become when I choose to do good, and when I choose to do evil?"

He concluded by recalling the role of the Holy Spirit, who awakens believers to the wisdom of the Commandments and gives them the strength to live by them. God's grace, he said, makes it possible to live these words out in our daily lives.

For Archbishop Lépine, the Commandments are the backbone of how we are meant to live. "God's commandments are the words of God," he said. "And that is no small thing."

Maribel Mayorga
Press Officer, Archbishop's Office and
Director, Communications and Media relations
Archdiocese of Montreal