WORD 2day: Monday, 28th week in Ordinary time
October 12, 2020: Galatians 4: 22-24, 26-27, 31 -5:1; Luke 11: 29-32
We are free children of God, declares Paul. With that comes the condition that we are to be held responsible for all the choices we make. Have you tried asking your students, or youth groups or your friends, or just anyone: who decides I should be happy or not? They would invariably refuse to answer, with a knotty smile on their faces! Because everyone knows, that it is one's own choice, or rather one's own choices. The free choices we make amount to the consequence we face, we know it well. But knowing is one thing, whereas acting on it is a totally different thing.
The Lord grants us the greatest gift of freedom, and leaves us with the responsibility for our choices. That is why, when we choose not to see the presence of God, when we choose not to find the moments of grace, when we choose not to realise the opportunities to do good, when we choose not to identify our brother or sister in the person next to us, we are choosing to rush towards a state that is so sad and so inhuman. In all these choices, we are choosing to be what we are not. Or we are choosing not to be what we really are! We are human persons created in freedom, in the image and likeness of God! But we choose not to be human, we choose to be inhuman!
Time and again the Lord sends us reminders - wars, exploitations, killings, terrorism, hunger deaths, violence, abuse, diseases and pandemics caused by human choices are reminders that we need to realise our true self, get back to our original image and likeness! But no one is going to force us to do that, because we are free children of the promise (cf. Gal 4:22-24); yes we are given the great gift of freedom. But Freedom is not free; we have to pay for it with our personal responsibility!