Wednesday, April 1, 2020, in the Fifth Week of Lent

Please pray for the soul of the father of Rev. John Kelly, who died up in Pennsylvania last night after a long illness.   May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace!

John 8, 31-42

Jesus said to those Jews who believed in him, “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How can you say, ‘You will become free’?” Jesus answered them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. A slave does not remain in a household forever, but a son always remains. So if the Son frees you, then you will truly be free. I know that you are descendants of Abraham. But you are trying to kill me, because my word has no room among you. I tell you what I have seen in the Father’s presence; then do what you have heard from the Father.” 

They answered and said to him, “Our father is Abraham.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works of Abraham. But now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God; Abraham did not do this. You are doing the works of your father!” So they said to him, “We were not born of fornication. We have one Father, God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and am here; I did not come on my own, but he sent me.”

In this reading, Jesus encourages us to think of what true freedom is.  

During the sixties and seventies lots of young people went around yelling that they wanted “to be free”.  One day I asked a teenage girl what she wanted to be free from.  She stopped talking and thought about it, and then looked up and said, with some determination, “I don’t know.  I just want to be free.”  But freedom doesn’t exist as an abstraction.  To be free means to be free from something or to do something.  There is political freedom, as in legal protection to speak freely or practice one’s religion.  There is personal freedom, as in breaking away from alcohol so as to be able to live without it.  And there is the freedom from sin.  In ancient times, freedom almost always meant freedom from slavery.  This was what the Jews understood when Jesus spoke of freedom.  But as Jesus is shown to do throughout John’s Gospel, he takes a human word and uses it to describe a heavenly reality.  He takes a word associated with the shame and horror and suffering of human slavery to talk about freedom from slavery to sin.  None of the prophets or rabbis had spoken of a slavery to sin.  A person might sin and even be known as a sinner, but the idea that sin could enslave a person was entirely new.  

The state of enslavement to sin begins with a single sin and grows with repeated sins, especially if they are of the same kind, such as gossiping or lying, until we stop recognizing these actions as sins.  Thus, gossiping or lying becomes normal to us to such an extent that we become reliant on these actions.  We depend on them.  In fact, we become their slaves.

This slavery to sin is far worse than any other kind of slavery because it deprives our souls of the life of grace.  As Jesus says, “A slave does not remain in a household forever, but a son always remains.”  There are no slaves in heaven but only the children of God.  The slaves are cast into the darkness with the devil.

Most slaves, in ancient times, died as slaves.  Masters did set slaves free occasionally and there was a legal process for this, but it was an uncommon practice for which the vast majority of slaves could not hope.  But while slavery to sin is worse than this kind of slavery, people trapped in it have reason to hope.  That hope is in the Passion and Death of the Lord Jesus, who brings liberating grace into the world.  He both provides an example of life without sin, and he makes it possible through the sacraments.

As a priest, I have seen how people who have committed grave sins and who have been away from the Church for long years leave the confessional crying tears of joy, walking in light and peace.  They have felt the bitter chains of sin and now the weights are lifted off, their fetters smashed, their prison doors opened.  Let us all avail ourselves of the opportunity to go to our Savior and receive the freedom from sin that he so passionately desires us to have.

I have heard from folks that they are having a hard time making comments, and I have not been able to figure out how to make replies to the comments that have come in.  If you would like to comment or ask a question about the blog, email me at mfcaime@cs.com.