Word of Life – July 2007

By the year 50 the apostle Paul had visited the region of Galatia in Asia Minor, which is now Turkey. There Christian communities had arisen that had embraced the faith with great enthusiasm. Paul had held up before their eyes Jesus crucified, and they had received the baptism that clothed them with Christ, giving them the freedom of children of God. Paul himself told them, “You were running well” along this new way.
Then all of a sudden they began to seek freedom elsewhere. Paul was surprised to see how quickly they turned away from Christ. This is when he pressed them to rediscover the freedom that Christ had given them:

“For you were called for freedom”

What freedom are we called to? Can’t we already do whatever we want? When Jesus told his contemporaries that “the truth” he brought “will set you free,” they objected, “We have never been enslaved to anyone.” Jesus responded. “Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin” (Jn 8:31-34).There is a subtle kind of slavery, the fruit of sin, that torments the human heart. We know its many faces well: self-sufficiency, the attachment to material goods, hedonism, pride, anger….
We will never be able to completely free ourselves from such slavery on our own. Freedom is a gift from Jesus: he set us free by making himself our servant and giving his life for us. Herein lies the invitation to align ourselves with the freedom that has been given to us.
This freedom is “not so much the possibility of choosing between what is good and what is bad, but rather to move more and more towards the good.” That is how Chiara Lubich explained it when young people questioned her on this topic. She went on to say: “I have experienced that good frees us, and evil enslaves us. In order to have freedom, we need to love. This is because what enslaves us the most is our own ego. When, instead, we always look to others, either to the will of God in doing what we ought or to our neighbor, we are not focused on ourselves and we are thus free from ourselves” (Rome, May 20, 1995).

“For you were called for freedom”

How then should we live this Word of Life? Paul himself tells us how: “For you were called for freedom… serve one another through love.” He explains why we must serve with love: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal 5:13-14).
We are free – this is the paradox of love – when we begin to serve others out of love, when, going against our selfish inclinations, we forget ourselves and we focus on the needs of others.
We are called to the liberty of love: we are free to love! Yes, “in order to have freedom, we need to love.”

“For you were called for freedom”

Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan was imprisoned because of his faith and he remained behind bars for thirteen years. During those years, he felt free because he could at least love the prison guards.
“When I was put in isolation,” he recounted, “I was watched by five guards: they took turns so that two of them were always with me. Their officers had told them: ‘You will be rotated every two weeks with another group, so that you will not be “contaminated” by this dangerous bishop.’ Later on they changed their minds and said: ‘There will be no more rotations otherwise this bishop will contaminate all the guards.’
“At the beginning the guards hardly ever spoke to me. They only answered ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ It was really a sad situation…. They avoided conversing with me.
“One night, this thought came to me: ‘Francis, you are still very rich. You have Christ’s love in your heart; love them as Jesus loved you.’
“The next day I began to love them even more, to love Jesus in them, by smiling, offering them a kind word. I began to tell them stories of my travels in other countries…. They then wanted to learn a foreign language: French or English … My guards had become my students!” (Testimony of Hope, Pauline Books and Media, 2000).

By Fabio Ciardi and Gabriella Fallacara