Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

In today’s gospel passage from Luke, Jesus criticizes those who seek a “sign.” He suggests that they are an evil generation, like the Ninevites, whose sign from Jonah was a call to repentance, to sackcloth and ashes, to a complete change of life. Here Jesus sits – the Son of Man, the incarnate God with them and among them, and the people are unable to appreciate him for what he is. Ultimately Jesus is something much greater than Jesus because he has come to call the people not merely to repentance but to freedom. In the first reading from the letter to Galatians, Paul emphasizes this call to freedom: “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1). In this letter, Paul’s specific concern is the “works of the law” associated with Jewish ritual practices, especially circumcision. In a sense, Paul indicates that they have been set free from circumcision. But his words go beyond this. Rather, what Paul indicates is that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection has set Christians free from the covenant (made between God and Abraham) of which circumcision was a sign. God himself has fulfilled this covenant by offering his own Son to his people.

Freedom from this covenant is ultimately a freedom FOR. It is a freedom for life in Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit. It is a freedom to love as God loves and to worship freely out of that love. It does not remove the need for repentance, but directs that repentance to its proper end, namely love of God. For Jesus and Paul, this is where Christians will find freedom. It should be clear to us that this kind of freedom is of a different sort than the kind so commonly celebrated by our culture and our country.

It is not mere freedom of choice, the ability to do whatever we want without consideration of others or God. Rather, it is a freedom that finds its fulfillment in doing what God desires for our lives. When we can align our will with God’s will, it is then that we feel true freedom. This kind of freedom is much harder to come by than our cultural understanding of freedom, but we see it in the lives of the saints and sometimes in the lives of the holy ones around us.

Today, let us think about those areas of our life where we feel the burden of slavery – perhaps in our eating habits or in a relationship where we seem always to say and do the wrong thing. Let us pray that we can be free, not submitting to the yoke of slavery to our selfish desires, but rather living Christ’s freedom of love.

- Maria Morrow