Freedom of spirit

LET’S hope that more and more of us get familiar with this freedom of spirit which is actually the true freedom meant for us. It’s not a freedom that is guided only by our own estimation that is steered only by our reason, by some social trends and ideologies, and much less by our animal instincts and urges. 

 To arrive at this knowledge about our true freedom which is the freedom of spirit, we need to ask ourselves the existential questions of where we came from, what the meaning and purpose of our life are, etc. For this, we just have to go from the natural and social sciences and to launch into the philosophical, metaphysical and theological. 

 This freedom of spirit is where we act in accord with God’s truth and goodness. It is exercised at the instance of the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Our freedom is not simply the power to act or not to act, and so to perform deliberate acts of our own. Our freedom attains its perfection when directed toward God, the sovereign Good, from whom we come and to whom we are destined to share in his very life and nature. 

 This is the freedom that was won for us by Christ who redeemed us from the bondage of sin. That is why St. Paul said: “For freedom Christ has set us free.” (Gal 5,1) And it is in Christ that we share in the truth that would set us free, as again articulated by St. Paul in his Second Letter to the Corinthians where he said: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” (3,17) 

 This is the kind of freedom that springs from an inner habit of virtue and not merely from some external command. This is when we do things under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and doing it willingly, with our whole heart. 

 This can only mean that our true freedom is the result of our docility to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, the promptings of the grace of God, making us free and effective collaborators in God’s continuing work of human redemption that would complete our creation by him. Our freedom is not meant only to achieve an earthly and temporal goal. 

 In other words, this freedom of spirit enables us to grow in docility to God’s grace, and to collaborate freely with God, serving others with love and building a society on the basis of truth, justice and charity. It also protects us from the slavery of sin, from worldly pressures and false liberties that lead to license. 

 We can have this freedom of spirit if we live by faith in God. It is made alive especially through the sacraments—Baptism, Penance and the Holy Eucharist. It is nurtured in prayer and the continuous growth of the virtues. 

 The role of prayer is crucial because that is where we can discern and embrace God’s will. St. Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, said in effect in this regard that we must pray to be able truly to know what God wants. (cfr. 8,27) 

 It’s clear that this freedom of spirit is a matter of being docile to the promptings of grace. It is what perfects our natural freedom, aligning it with the will and the ways of God. It’s important that we form our conscience according to the truths of our faith. For this, a lifelong formation of conscience is needed. Our freedom of conscience should be the freedom of spirit!

The instinct of seeking God always

WE need to cultivate this instinct. It does not come automatically through the working of our biological make-up. It requires the grace of God and our effort. And for that, we have to learn how to deal with the interplay of the supernatural, natural and infranatural forces that are at work in us. 

 Yes, we need faith, the grace of God, plus the attitude of humility and obedience on our part to be able to feel the need to seek Christ always in our life. We also have to learn how to be guarded against our weaknesses, temptations and the sins and mistakes we commit that would definitely spoil our effort to seek God as an instinct. 

 It’s always God who makes the initiative for us to have this instinct of seeking him always. But we have to try to be discerning, receptive and responsive to this reality. And this can only happen if we are first of all humble enough to acknowledge that we are not our own being. 

 That is, that we just did not come from our own parents and the long line of our ancestry. Nor did we just come into existence in some spontaneous way. All of us and everything else in existence have a beginning. This consideration should lead us to the realization that we and everything else must have come from a being who has no beginning, who has always been existing from all eternity. 

 This is when we can start to realize that there must be a God who is responsible for the creation of the whole universe. And as we try to know more about him who reveals himself to us in various ways and continuously, we would eventually get the picture of who we really are, what we are supposed to be, and how our relation with God should be. 

 This is when we can feel the need to seek Christ and to be with him always. He is actually everything for us. We need him more than we need air, food, etc. He is our basic need because not only are we just any creature of his who needs him for existence, but we are the most special ones since we have been created by him in such a way that we become his very image and likeness, meant to share his very life and nature. 

 If we only would realize this basic truth about ourselves, then there is no doubt that we would feel the need to be seek him and be with him all the time. We just cannot be on our own. And by being with him, we would avoid drifting aimlessly in life. We would have a complete picture of the purpose of our life and of the whole universe. 

 For this to take place, we should understand that our freedom is best exercised when it is used to seek God first and always. We would realize that we are actually given a choice of whether we choose to be with God or simply to be on our own. 

 What can help us in this is when we learn really to have a personal and intimate relation with God by means of prayer and the other practices of piety, especially the reception of the sacraments. We would also feel the need for an appropriate means of continuing formation, considering that we often find ourselves inconsistent, vacillating and irresolute in our resolve and commitments. 

 Let’s hope that we can truly develop this instinct of seeking God always.

“Lord, you will show us the path of life”

THAT’S the responsorial psalm of the Mass of the 3rd Sunday of Easter, Year A. It’s taken from Psalm 16,11. It’s again another reassurance from God that despite the complexities of our life today that offers us all sorts of pathways that can be both alluring and deceptive, in the end it is the Lord who will show us the true path of life, the path that leads us to our eternal life. 

 We should not be too worried with what we have to contend these days. As long as we stick with Christ through the many instrumentalities made available to us, we can feel sure that we would be on the right track. Obviously, this would involve a lot of effort and sacrifice, and nothing less than the cross of Christ itself, but the final victory is guaranteed for us. 

 The challenge for us is how we can closely follow Christ who not only shows the way but also leads and accompanies us along the way. This, in essence, is what holiness is all about, holiness lived in our day-to-day routine. 

 This can mean that we should try our best to imitate Christ in our thoughts, feelings, words and deeds. If we manage to do that, it would surely have the effect of us loving God and everybody else, irrespective of how they are to us. It would involve a love that would lead us to develop other virtues and to grow in them, like the virtues of humility, justice, integrity, solidarity, charity, etc. It’s a love that would keep us going and growing. 

 If we follow Christ closely, we would know how to do our daily work well, honestly and fairly. As a consequence, we would be sanctifying our work itself and the world in general from the inside. In a sense, we would be making the Gospel present in all our temporal affairs, be they brilliant or humble and hidden. What truly matters here is the love we put into our work, and not so much the success of our work in terms of money, fame, etc. 

 But we might ask: can we really deal with Christ directly? The answer is: of course, we can always talk with Christ. It should be the most normal thing to do, since in the first place Christ who is God is always with us. While we cannot always have anybody to talk to, and sometimes we can even forget to talk with our own selves, God on the other hand is always with us and is always willing to listen and talk to us too. 

 That’s his nature. That’s his desire. God is the very support of our own existence, and that of everybody and everything else. And he, mind you, does not support our life only in a passive way. He’s full of love, of solicitude, of attention and concern. He’s actually hot with us. 

 St. Augustine said, “to know where God is may be difficult, but to know where God is not, that is even more difficult!” Christ himself reassured his apostles, “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” (Mt 28,20) 

 We just have to learn how to acknowledge this reality. Our problem is that we restrict our grasp of reality to what is observable only to the senses, and captured by our feelings. Our thinking is often so dominated by these human faculties alone that it fails to enter into the spiritual and supernatural realities. We need to do something about this problem.