Saturday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/101312.cfm

Before faith came, we were held in custody under law, confined for the faith that was to be revealed. Consequently, the law was our disciplinarian for Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a disciplinarian. For through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus.

A boardwalk in a marsh

As Saint Paul understood it, Jews were confined under the custody and by the strictures of the law, but Christians enjoy amazing freedom. We may eat whatever we want, speak whatever language we know, and go wherever the Spirit sends us. Freed by Jesus’ resurrection from the fear of death, we can speak the Truth before friends and enemies. This liberty, of course, is never a freedom to do evil or to be driven by the random desires of the flesh; it is rather a freedom to obey God’s spirit in all things. Christian liberty is essentially freedom from one’s own fears and desires and freedom to obedience.

American film directors, actors, writers and song writers – our leading artists -- shudder at the thought of submission to a human authority. In a thousand different ways they say, “I gotta be me.”

Whether I'm right or whether I'm wrong
Whether I find a place in this world or never belong
I gotta be me, I've gotta be me
What else can I be but what I am

But Christians shudder at the thought of enslavement to oneself. There is no bondage worse than pursuing one’s own ends without regard to the needs and desires of others.

Many Americans admire Ayn Rand, a second-rate philosopher and worse novelist. She was serious when she named one of her books, “The Virtue of Selfishness.” Her novels justify anarchy and destruction as self-expression. Her philosophy may be called, “survival of the fittest” or “utopian individualism.” It was quite the thing in the 1950’s and her cult has never disappeared. Some of her Christian disciples conveniently forget that she despised the very idea of God, and denounced His presence in our world.

We cannot survive on this dangerous planet if we don’t care for one another. No human being is self-made; no one can live without the companionship and support of others. I witness this daily as I care for sick and wounded Veterans. I hear this in the stories of the crowds who brought their sick to Jesus. Because he was a human being he could not not care for them. He never dreamed that his disciples might say the fittest should survive, or that the poor -- his Blessed Mother among them -- are not loved by God.

By his Incarnation he bound himself to every human being. Keeping faith, as Saint Paul urged, means being true to the God who revealed him self in Bethlehem, to one another and to our selves as creatures made in the image of God. We must keep the covenants we have made and the obligations given to us. In our death to the isolated self, not the virtue of selfishness, we find our freedom.