Saturday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 466



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.



I often meet Veterans in the hospital as they prepare for major surgery. To Catholics I offer the Sacrament of the Sick and they usually welcome it, even those who have not seen the inside of Church since they went off to Vietnam. "It can't hurt;" I tell them, "and it might help."
Asked if they are ready for the trauma of surgery, many reply, "I haven't any choice."
Of course, they do. Legally they are perfectly free to refuse; morally, also, some may choose not to undergo the risks that accompany every invasion of the body.
But, as I said, they often take a non-committal, neutral position, "I haven't any choice."
Most of us come from that place. Our good parents made the important decisions for us. What to eat, what to wear, what to study: it was all decided. Where to live, what language to speak, which God to worship: wiser, more experienced heads decided for us. 

Recent studies have shown the child's brain is simply not prepared to make many important decisions. In fact, Americans routinely expect children to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, engage in sex, handle guns, and drive cars when they're barely able to consider the consequences of such life-altering behavior. If the children come from minority homes and get in trouble with the law, they will be "tried as adults" despite their obvious immaturity. Nor will they find competent lawyers to speak for them.

Saint Paul alludes to that inconvenient fact of life, the immaturity of children, when he teaches the Galatians about Christian freedom. Before you heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you needed protection from your own base instincts. You didn't have the Holy Spirit to guide you or the Christian community to instruct you. Jews had the Law of Moses; gentiles had only their diverse cultures with their uninspired notions of human nature. Until Jesus appeared we had no substantial idea of what it means to be a human being, neither a man nor a woman. 

Without the Christian revelation we supposed that men were better than women, masters better than slaves, Jews better than Greeks, natives better than aliens. The wisdom of their ancient cultures -- we might call them "sciences" -- dictated what they should expect of different people. We call that wisdom "common sense." 

And then, when we meet another culture, we either attempt to dominate them with our wisdom, or we learn to accommodate theirs; depending on which is more powerful. Reason may help to sort out these values but, more often, "might makes right." Money, weapons, brute force determine who is right. 

Pilate knew whereof he spoke when he dismissed Jesus' witness to the truth. To the Roman, power is truth and the unarmed wisdom of a Jewish messiah counts for nothing in "the real world." 

So Saint Paul offers his Galatians another wisdom, far surpassing anything the world might discover or understand. They have been subject all their lives to immature half-truths of their gentile or Jewish cultures; but now they must learn to live and move in the freedom of the Spirit. They are no longer under the disciplinarians of human wisdom or partial revelation. If they could see dimly in the dawn of their gentile or Jewish past, they can see clearly now by the Sun of God.

But Saint Paul hesitates to give his people full license because some are still acting by their immature brains. There are factions among them; some are scrupulous about meat offered to idols, some insist that gentile men should be circumcised. They cannot consume the solid food of the Gospel; they are not yet weaned off milk. 

Twenty centuries later the Gospel still invites us to live by the Spirit of Jesus, in the freedom of the Truth. The Spirit still reveals the foolishness of the wise; it still invites us to take up a cross when the clever take up arms. 

Facing surgery many Veterans remember what their life is about and decide accordingly. Some believe they have more to accomplish in this world, in Jesus' name; and they hurry into surgery. Others conclude that this terminal illness is truly a gift from God; and it's time to let it go. In either case they know they have a choice and are ready to obey not the doctor but the Lord.