Jesus was free because he was rooted in the love of God and, therefore, humble. Ultimately, Jesus was free enough to offer his life as a sacrifice for the sake of God’s truth. Humbly rooted in love, Jesus was free to die on a cross. And in that freedom, God’s freedom of love was revealed, the love that brings about a new future. The cross signifies to us that if we are free enough to love then we are free enough to die, and if we are free to die then we are free to live. As long as we are in relation to a God who is freedom-in-love, then death will be part of our journey. For every distance of separation from God must be overcome by death, by giving up isolated existence for a greater union. Finite human life longs for fulfillment of relationship, for union, and only death can remove the veil that separates us from the infinite love of God. Yes, freedom is the gift of love but love prevails in freedom. Violence, suffering and death do not have the last word in God. The last word is love.
God is not afraid of mistakes, it seems. God knows that God can turn everything around—into good. There are no dead ends in the economy of grace. So, God allows us to play the field and eat of almost all the trees in the garden. This is scary, but Paul, as usual, offers a crescendo statement of the same: “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1). Jesus lives it in his climactic forgiving breath (John 20:22), wherein he eternally frees humanity from its shame and guilt. Consider it this way: God’s main problem is how to give away God! But God has great difficulty doing this. You’d think everybody would want God, but the common response is something like this: “Lord, I am not worthy. I would rather have religion and morality, which give me the impression that I can win a cosmic contest by my own efforts.”
The things and people we cling to imprison us; the things and people we love free us. The most liberating experience of all is to love something or someone and not at the same time want to control the object of our love. True love allows the other his or her own freedom; yes, even desires that freedom; and in return the lover is free to love more and more selflessly. If I am willing to love you and let you go whenever and wherever you wish, we are both free and our love grows. Otherwise, need and dependence replace love, and we grow tired of what all of this is costing us emotionally. Some learn this basic fact of life, and they become the saints we all know. Others never do learn it, and they are constantly caught in webs of their own making, unable to break loose and enjoy the freedom of the children of God.
Selflessness and material generosity flow from and into spiritual freedom. And this free spirit leads us unerringly out of ourselves to God who is perfect freedom and in whom and for whom we move with the uninhibited freedom of a child. We become aware that we are children of a God who loves us with a Father and Mother’s love, and everything we do becomes a gift for God, to please and thank God for being who God is to us. Gradually, the negativism and disapproval of life’s persistent critics means little at all when compared to our determination to do the will of the One who made us and redeemed us. Even our occasional ignorance of what that will is, is purified in our intention to do it as best we can.
Letting go of our external attachments through simple living does help us to show up with our best selves. Finally, though, such lettings-go are prelude and path to the ultimate letting go, which costs not less than everything: our attachment to our own self. Of course, all of us will have to do this at the end of our days. But as Jesus, St. Francis, the Buddha, and plenty of other mystics and spiritual masters have taught and shown us, it’s possible through practice to let go even in this life, to stop taking ourselves so seriously, to walk in the spacious freedom that comes from having nothing to prove, nothing to grasp at. In that condition of complete simplicity, which we may only experience in glimpses during this life, we find our truest belonging in and among all things and their Maker. And we know, as St. Julian did, that “all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
How available to God are you in your life? What’s stopping you from being 100% available to God? There is an amazing sense of freedom when you realize that one of your best abilities is availability!
Jesus tells the crowd, “If you make my word your home, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They respond ‘”We are descendants of Abraham and have never been the slaves to anyone! What do you mean by ‘We will be free?’” Jesus answered them, “I tell you sincerely, anyone who chooses a dead-ended life and stops growing, is in sin, and that is slavery” (see John 8:31–35).
We have all experienced it. When someone wants to dislike us, no matter what we do, it will be interpreted in the worst possible fashion. As we often say, “You can’t win.” When someone’s heart is hardened already, you could be Jesus himself, and they will seriously see you as wrong, inferior, dangerous, and heretical—which is what is about to happen in Holy Week. At that point, no matter what evil a person decides to do to you, it will be deemed virtuous and praiseworthy by hardened or paranoid people in the hostile camp. “He is a terrorist!” they might say. Never having the humility or honesty to admit that to someone else, looking from a different perspective (which is deemed totally wrong), he probably looks like a sacrificial and dedicated freedom fighter. John had to make a clear villain here for the sake of the debate, so he safely chose his own race and people. There are claims and counterclaims of truth, freedom, lineage, tradition, killing, and divine illegitimacy. Jesus fights back well, but he does not have a chance. Their hearts are already hardened in place, which in this archetypal story is really not a statement about Jews as much as it is about all of humanity. “I have my conclusions already, do not bother me with any new information that might make me change my judgment.” Most Christians would probably be slow to admit that by these criteria almost all of us would have opposed Jesus. “This is not our tradition, he is not from our group, and he has no credentials!”
“God of perfect freedom, open spaces inside of our minds, our hearts, and our memories, so we can just begin to be free. Do not let me be hardened against anyone of your creatures, so that I cannot hear and respect their truth.”
The gift of the Holy Spirit must be accompanied by our free choice to follow His inspiration and guidance. If we do not choose to resist sin, the Spirit cannot help us, for He will not violate our freedom. However, if we make even a weak resolve to struggle against temptation and sin, the Holy Spirit can rush into us and fortify that weak resolve, giving us enough strength to resist the deadly sins with greater effectiveness.
— Fr. Robert Spitzer, S.J. from his book Escape from Evil’s Darkness
