Weekend Homily: Commitment and Freedom

As I began to prepare for the homily, my thoughts carried me back to some of my earliest memories as young Christian. It was passages like the one we just heard from the Gospel of Luke that intrigued me, and perhaps instilled a sense of fear, the most.

Especially I recalled a certain sense of religious anxiety or spiritual unrest that accompanied my deeper reflections on Jesus' warning that "No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God." I suppose that I am still close enough to my agrarian roots for the image to have the fullness of its original intended meaning. Of course, we can easily and simply restate it: when we commit to follow Jesus, we must commit wholeheartedly.

Part of the journey toward the kingdom of God is learning not to desire those aspects of life that we have previously surrendered. Nevertheless, I couldn't get around a nagging suspicion that something much deeper was being gotten at by Jesus in his demand that we not look back.

Because I am a convert from Evangelical and Pentecostal forms of Christianity, it's easy for me to relate to the idea of being saved; that is, of being saved from something, and typically I found that this meant being saved from a Godless life to a transformed existence. There is a certain sense of being empowered to live victoriously that's inherent in this kind of Christian viewpoint, so it's not something that I would reject outright. It can indeed have merit for us as Catholics and we might do well to consider the power of God to transform our lives.

However, the gist of today's scriptural lessons runs all the way to the essential core of what it means to be human. Jesus' warning not to look back is much more involved than simply being about not sinning, though that too is part of it. The deepest meaning of the lesson is that in following Christ, in being a baptized Christian, by participating in the Sacraments of salvation, we acquire a particular freedom that differs qualitatively in terms of depth from what one ordinarily means by freedom. We might say that the freedom given in Christ is a transcendent freedom because it reaches to the foundation of what it means to be a human being. Such freedom inspires awe in the human heart because it places us in the presence of God. It is freedom in the Spirit, and the freedom inherent in the new nature given to us in baptism.

Without any doubt whatsoever the freedom that is the gift in salvation is ours because of what Jesus did for us in his Passion, and we respond through obedience and by our unswerving commitment to live in the spiritual liberty that God has so graciously given to us. It is the same freedom that our Lord exercised in offering himself, thus our participation in it is a participation in the cup of salvation. It unites us with Christ in a way that is perfectly symbolized and revealed in and through the Eucharist.

Our course of action is to live by the Spirit, and to live spiritually requires that we look deeply within ourselves to the source of our spirituality. It also demands that we recognize what stands in our way as the enemy of the freedom given to us to live as the children of God. Where lies the temptation to set our direction in life in opposition to God's will? It would be easy to look outside ourselves for a source of spiritual failure, yet the true difficulty is that it is precisely this short-lived bodily existence of ours, at least the part of it that remains subject to the fallen nature, which we must overcome.

Although we participate through Christ in spiritual freedom, our corporal humanity, our physical and sensual nature, is set against it. St. Paul warns us that the Spirit and the flesh are opposed to each other. Thus we find it as a source of fear and anxiety when presented with scripture's spiritual ultimatums. This too was the source of what I felt as a youth when I was confronted with so stern an admonition as "Don't look back." Many were the times that I imagined the horrible fate of Lot's wife as I, in fact, sometimes did find myself looking away from the goal of the kingdom of God.

There is an assurance that Christians of all backgrounds share: as Psalms 16 instructs us, we may always take refuge in the Lord; it is he who shows us "the path to life." In him we rejoice both "body and soul," and we seek to be instructed and guided by the Holy Spirit through the teachings of the Church.

Living by the Spirit in such a way that we allow it to sanctify our bodily humanity, complete with all the passions and desires that often have the power to blind our hearts, presents no great mystery to us. The Spirit is the master of the body, and thus by submission to the freedom of the Spirit the body too rejoices in the holiness of God. Clearly, we fulfill the call to live by the Spirit in obeying the law of love through being at the service of all our fellow human beings regardless of whether they share our faith.

It is true that living by the Spirit presents us with great challenges, but when we persevere we will overcome them. The love that serves, heals, and reconciles has the potential to overcome all obstacles regardless how great or seemingly impossible they may be.

Ultimately, God does ask us for a lasting commitment, a promise as binding as the vows of marriage, and we respond to him with forward-looking affirmation.

We are followers of the Master for we have heard his irresistible summons to come and be with him on the journey. The Psalmist asks, "How shall I repay the Lord for all he has done for me?" We too in having discovered our freedom ask similarly, and similarly we answer, "I will take up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will fulfill my vows to the Lord before all his people."

Comments

[A Catholic]

Oh, lovely. :-)

You've made about 18 good points I'd like to address, but I'd rather ask what instilled a sense of fear in you, and why?

[Deacon DW]

I hadn't counted them, but 18 points are too many. I'll have to do better next time.

Fear--keep in mind that I was young and often very literal-minded. Add to it that I was a member of a denomination that stressed a strict holiness code. All it took was one Friday night of beer drinking with my old buddies to blow the whole thing. Then I confronted myself with not being "fit for the kingdom of God."

Back then I wasn't sure whether there was any hope for those who chose willingly to sin after having tasted the goodness of the spirit-led life.

My alternatives were either to find a satisfactory form of penance or to embrace liberal religion and avoid the issue altogether. The liberal religion route was unsatisfactory. I felt more and more over the years that I needed somehow to be absolved when situations of failure arose.

However, beyond all of my personal history, it occurs to me that the issuance of spiritual absolutes, those which compare and contrast stark differences such as heaven/hell, gain/loss, presence/absence, inclusion/exclusion, creates an existential dilemma. They illicit the dread of non-being.

These comparisons are a common device in the gospels and appear to be one of Jesus' favorite ways to make his point, a point made in such a way to speak to the depths of the soul. Such comparisons and contrasts force us to make a decision and they place the responsibility clearly upon the individual person.

[Anon.]

Absolutes, yes--you're right. "Choose life!" Older cradle Catholics lived in fear, too. I remember crying in Mass once, because I felt so hopeless about myself ever remaining holy for longer than a half-hour. I think many older Catholic folks once self-punished as penitents (indeed, an existential dilemma: damned if ya do, miserable if ya don't!) until they realized that the Lord does not expect us to do it all alone.. and until we realize we must invite His help if we are to fulfill His will for us (and He does have one for each of us), and until we hand Him the heart's decree to apply His scalpel as and wherever needed..

A pastor once said if one goes back to the confessional again and again with the same sin to not be embarrassed. Rather, we were to be commended for tackling the very problem that could put distance between us and Him. We can be sure His grace is at work. As you've noted here and there, the Catholic Church is the hardest of all. I'm thinking that some of us are harder on ourselves than the Divine Mercy would be.

[MMajor Fan]

Very well written and an important message! If I can shed a little more light on the analogy used by Jesus. Remember that in his time the plow was pulled by oxen, or horse. My stepfather and my uncles all were old enough to have plowed by horse in their youth. They explain that one always had to look ahead to protect yourself and the animal from the plow striking a stone or boulder in the field. The plow would actually jump out of one's hands and cause injury, so it had to be constantly held down with great strength and concentration. Jesus is pointing out that by looking back, one is not looking forward and applying the faith to resolve the challenges that the present time and future inevitably hold. Repeat sin and struggle is to be expected, like the inevitable presence of hidden stones in the field, and by looking only ahead can be managed and overcome.

[A Catholic]

"held down with great strength and concentration" so as to keep going forward..

Wonderful analogy, and personally helpful-- thank you, MMajor Fan.