The Only Way to True Freedom is Through Submission: The Paradox of Faith

We human beings are inclined to complicate things more often than not. I want to make a humble suggestion here: that the end we desire is not complicated. Quite simply, the end we desire is to enter into the presence of the God Who Is Love itself, and to live with him forever in heaven. The way has been shown to us, and the grace of God has been promised to us. To achieve that end, therefore, we must come to know the One who is the way and to willingly choose to follow his way in our daily lives. How do we find that way? We have been given the tools of intellect, memory, and imagination to find the way, and we have also been given free will, with which we can choose to follow that way, or not.

In a perfect world, there would be no clash, no separation between the perfect will of God and our free wills. But as we know only too well by experience, ours is not a perfect world. Because sin entered the world through a willful choice, the complications, the consequences of sin also entered it. The first sin was a sin of pride, and pride is the root of all other sins. Humanity’s prideful will is what distorts our greatest gift, freedom. Because we participate in sin, we often find ourselves lost. The great Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, describes this in the first stanza of the Inferno in his Divine Comedy writing, “Midway in life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.” Many times and in many ways, we have willfully gone off the straight road and, as a result, we have lost our way. And it is for this reason that Jesus came into the world: to show us the narrow way back to paradise.

We hear in Matthew’s Gospel these words from Jesus: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Mt. 14:6). This is a very clear statement. It is simple in structure and meaning. His way is the only true and living way that can lead us back out of the dark woods of our sins. In him alone can we find the light that can illumine the narrow road back to the Mount of Paradise that is our proper home. What is it that gets in the way so often for us? Our misuse of our fallen freedom, our free will, our willful pride. We get caught up in thinking that we have the power and the right to find our way. Former Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart, put the problem in these simple terms: “Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do, and what is right to do.” That describes the dilemma of our freedom in a nutshell. It is to know the truth and, then, to do it…or not.

The way of Jesus, of course, is not easy; it goes through sacrifice, suffering, and death, after all. Jesus is very direct about this when he tells us: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay each according to his conduct” (Mt 16: 24-27). In these words of Jesus we see our daily challenge. The way to follow Jesus is to let go of our prideful ego and, then, willingly pick up the “crosses” that will come our way. We cannot save ourselves by the power of our will or our own perceived intellectual strengths. We cannot buy our way to heaven or out of hell. But if we willingly lose our ego, our pride, for the sake of Jesus, we will find the happiness our hearts seek. It always remains a choice. We are always free.

This world is not our home. Though it, too, is God’s creation and is filled with great, even transcendent beauty and worth, it is not the home that God has created for us for all eternity. Because of our sinfulness, we often turn this world into the dark wood of fraud, violence, and ambition, and the muddiness of undisciplined sensual passions. These are not the things we were made for; rather, they are the opposite. They are the false paths that lead us away from the bright, sunlit path of God and into the dark ways of loneliness, anger, hatred, guilt, and despair. We find in Jesus the example of such submission to the Father. It was his willing submission to the Father that redeemed us from sin and death, once and for all. That is the great paradox of our Christian faith. It is our willing submission to the will of God that truly frees us.

Lord, give us the graces we need to find our true freedom and our deepest meaning and purpose through our willing submission to your loving and liberating will for us. We pray in Jesus’ most holy name. Amen.