On May 27, the Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Montreal and the Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom community came together for an evening of reflection titled The Ten Commandments: Rediscovering a Path for Living. Scholars, community leaders and Church representatives gathered around a conviction they held in common: that the Decalogue remains a living source of wisdom and hope, as needed in our time as in any before it.

Jean Duhaime, professor emeritus of religious studies at the Université de Montréal and a past president of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Montreal, opened the evening by returning the "ten words" to their original setting in the Exodus narrative and the Covenant of Sinai. He drew out their enduring power to speak to a world shaped, as he sees it, by new forms of slavery: violence, falsehood, covetousness, and the worship of power and money. Far from belonging to a distant past, the Decalogue, he argued, opens a path toward genuine interior freedom and stands as an enduring call to relationships built on truth, justice and mutual respect.

David Bensoussan, president of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Montreal, followed with a reflection on the commandments as a moral and spiritual foundation ordered toward human freedom. He was careful to move past any reduction of the commandments to a list of prohibitions, presenting them instead as essential reference points for building a more just society, one grounded in the dignity of every person, a sense of shared responsibility and genuine regard for one's neighbour. At the heart of his reflection was a point the tradition has long cherished: the divine teaching was given after the liberation from Egypt. The Decalogue does not precede freedom; it flows from it. Its deepest purpose is to teach a people how to live together in peace and justice.

A period of questions and open exchange followed, facilitated by Martina McLean, director of the Office for English Pastoral Services and assistant to the episcopal vicar for English-speaking faithful at the Archdiocese of Montreal. A member of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Montreal committee, Ms. McLean guided the conversation with pastoral sensitivity and a sure hand, drawing participants and speakers into an exchange that was wide-ranging without losing its focus.

Archbishop Christian Lépine of Montreal also contributed to the evening, offering a reflection on the bond between the commandments and the Covenant. He spoke of how the Jewish tradition has, over the years, deepened his own understanding of the Law of God, a Law that opens, in the Jewish reading, not with a command but with a declaration: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt." That opening, he noted, carries its own theology. The Law is first a word of liberation and an invitation into a living relationship with God.

On one point the Archbishop was particularly clear: the divine Law does not come to diminish the human person but to reveal what the human person is truly called to be. Our outward actions also shape our inner life, he observed. To harm another is, in the same movement, also to do harm to oneself. He recalled that Moses understood the gift of the Law as an extraordinary privilege for Israel, something to be lived, treasured and handed on.

Archbishop Lépine spoke with evident joy of seeing Jewish people and Christians gathered around the heritage they share, describing the commandments as "words of life" for all humanity. He also drew on his regular encounters with young adults, pointing to the deep hunger he sees in them for meaning, for truth, and for reliable bearings in a world that offers little certainty. It is there, he suggested, that the commandments find some of their most vital contemporary resonance, as guideposts capable of lighting their path and nourishing their spiritual search.

The evening invited all who took part to rediscover the Decalogue not as a body of ancient obligations but as what the tradition has always held it to be: a word addressed to every generation, calling men and women to live in freedom, justice, truth and love of neighbour, the same call that first went out across the wilderness of Sinai.

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