Sunday's readings remind me of a situation I
encountered years ago teaching junior boys in a Catholic high school.
When I brought up the topic of actually
choosing the faith we profess, the boys pointed out that they had no say in
their becoming and remaining Catholic. Their parents had them baptized as
infants, sent them to Catholic grade and high school, and insisted they do
what their religion demanded.
They not only resented their lack of freedom in
the process, they made it crystal clear that, if they had their druthers,
they certainly wouldn't have signed up for my religion course.
The authors of Sunday's three Scripture
passages can't imagine such a situation. They're convinced that faith
isn't really faith unless it's freely chosen.
Freely chosen
Our Wisdom writer sets the biblical table be
reminding us that faith alone takes us beyond our human limits (Wis 9:
13-18). "Who can know God's counsel," he asks, "or who can
conceive what Yahweh intends? For the deliberations of mortals are timid,
and unsure are our plans." Unless we freely choose to step beyond
"our grasp" into the realm of faith, we'll never discover the
"things [that] are in heaven."
Hearing Jesus' demands in the Gospel (Lk 14:
25-33), we realize no one can be forced to become His disciple. He calls us
to "'hate' father and mother, wife and children, brothers and
sisters, and even [our] own life,...to carry [our] cross and come after
Him...and to renounce all [our] possessions."
It's no accident that, after issuing such a
call, Jesus immediately talks about the necessity of planning and plotting
for the future. The decision to follow Him doesn't come naturally.
This Sunday, I encourage lectors to put their
lectionaries away, pull out their large-print Bibles and proclaim every word
of Paul's letter to Philemon (Phil 9-10, 12-17). It's only 25 verses.
The homilist will probably take longer to create the historical context for
the eight liturgical verses than for the community to hear the other 17
verses that automatically provide that context.
Philemon, Paul's convert and friend, is a
rich slave-owner. Onesimus, one of Philemon's slaves, has escaped from his
estate (after trashing some of his property) and fled to Paul, offering to
become his servant. Paul welcomes his proposal. But there's a problem:
Philemon hasn't voluntarily granted On-esimus his freedom.
No force
So Paul sends a letter to his old friend,
requesting he now make Onesimus a free man. "I did not want to do
anything without your consent," he writes, "so that the good you
do might not be forced but voluntary."
But Paul doesn't stop there. Because he
believes a forced action - no matter how good and praiseworthy - is
worthless, he demands even more freedom from Onesimus than from Philemon. He
doesn't hire a special messenger to deliver his letter. He sends it with
Onesimus!
Not only does Paul expect Philemon freely to
release Onesimus, he also expects Onesimus freely to put himself back into
Philemon's power and only then request his freedom.
Psychologists often remind us of the obvious:
Very few of our daily actions are freely performed. Even many of the good
things we do are carried out only because we're afraid to do something
bad. We perform them out of force and fear.
At the same time, moral theologians remind us
that God judges us only on our free actions. Nothing we've been forced to
do will count when God hands us our eternal zip code.
God expects us to integrate as much freedom
into our daily lives as possible. Our free choices not only determine how we
live our Christian faith, but also make high school religion classes much
more enjoyable.
(9/2/04)