Last night, on Holy Thursday, I spoke about our response to that vulnerability and humility as the entry point for an authentic Christian spiritual life grounded in gratitude. Gratitude is the disposition we take as we approach the Altar.
I emphasized the beginning of the Eucharistic rite where the priest says, "It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks..."
Therefore, today, with this backdrop of humility and gratitude in the forefront of our minds, we consider the disorienting mystery of God hanging on a Cross. As such, I would like to briefly consider a Christian understanding of freedom. What is freedom?
I know a man who is now serving time in prison who says he is freer than he has ever been in his adult life. He has a clear conscience now, he accepted responsibility for his criminal past, and he is healing in ways he never knew he needed to heal. He has a sustaining prayer life. I would argue this man is freer now, in prison, that he was when he was when he was in outside, when he was ‘free’ in society.
In order to understand these great and abstract concepts, such as love, freedom, peace, life, we must first gaze upon the Cross and allow them to come into focus. Because:
If you want to know what love is – look to the Cross.
If you want to know what peace is – look to the Cross.
Likewise, if you want to know what freedom is – look to the Cross.
How can this be? How can it be that Jesus Christ hanging on a Cross is freedom?
The greats in our spiritual tradition would have us consider freedom through an understanding of our deep attachments. We are attached to things we don’t even know we are attached to. The human mind is complex, to understate the obvious, and I am not a psychologist but the spiritual nexus must be considered when considering authentic freedom.
Let me consider this personally… what am I attached to? Am I attached to a certain notion of success as a priest? Am I attached to saving this parish? Am I attached to my own way of thinking?
I guess I should freely admit that I am attached to those little chocolate easter eggs…we are all on a journey…
When God called me to the priesthood, He didn’t call me to go save a parish. He called me to participate in His love and to proclaim His love; through word, deed and Sacrament.
For me, that has been a journey of humility, of detachment, of letting go, of surrender and of glimpses of peace that surpass all understanding in the midst of the mess.
I can’t save a parish. I can’t save you. I can’t even save myself. I need Jesus for all of that.
When I work on ensuring that my deepest attachment is to Jesus, I then become free to be who I was created to be. I become free to do that which is mine to do and to trust that God is going to work it all out.
Because, in order to truly be free, I must understand those deep attachments that distract me and may even enslave me.
Jesus shows us how to be free as He walks to the cross.
When his persecutors arrived, Jesus willingly rejected his attachment to his earthly life by readily admitting that He was the person they were looking for. Jesus is who we are all looking for, even his persecutors.
Jesus showed Peter his attachment to a worldly understanding of justice by telling him to put his sword away – by telling him, “I don’t need you to protect me.”
He showed Pilate his attachment to his understanding of power by saying “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.”
Freedom is the call we receive to separate ourselves from the herd, and the well-worn path of what the world considers “normal” and to simply surrender to God.
Jesus took his disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane. He took Peter, James and John a little further, and then he went alone – to do what was his to do. To show you, and me, how to be free.
Whom are you looking for?
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