 |
| Paul's later letters were written while he was in prison in Rome: they are known as the "Captivity letters." Here the artist imagines Paul in prison, writing his letter to the Church at Ephesus. |
Today’s Second Reading, from the letter to the Galatians, gives us Paul’s
great teaching on freedom. It is summed up in that letter in the words, “Where
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
Paul makes an interesting contrast. He does not oppose freedom with
slavery, or imprisonment, or oppression, or captivity; he contrasts it with
self-indulgence. And by self-indulgence he does not mean what we usually mean;
gluttony, lust or any of the other modern types of materialism we hear about with such
regularity. For Paul, self-indulgence means two things; lack of love for
neighbour, and failure to be guided by the Spirit of God.
For Paul, we cannot love one another, nor can we live at peace with one other, without the freedom from self-centredness, from self-indulgence, which
only God’s Spirit can bring about in us. He uses the most common example of
this in our lives; our extreme willingness to find fault with others, to snap
at people for the faults they have that annoy us. We recognise how intolerant
we can be of others’ weaknesses, and especially of their criticisms. But we are
outraged when someone dares to tell us we are wrong about something,
especially when that person has faults of his own. And how often do we lash out
in kind; we counter someone else’s criticisms of us by criticizing them, hoping to neutralise their words
by revealing to them that, since they are no better than we are, they have no
business criticizing us. In this way, marriages, families, cities and countries
are torn apart or reduced to tattered shreds.
This is what Paul refers to as self-indulgence. It is one of the worst
characteristics of human beings. It is one about which we moralize, one which
we try to rectify by human means,
through endless counseling, group discussions and platitudes.
But there is no real human solution to it. We have no human ways to
correct each others’ sins; in fact, we are not going to correct people’s sins
at all. Each one of us can help only ourselves, in this regard, with the help
of God. But, like God, and with his help, we can learn to live with the sins
and weaknesses of others, and to find ways of encouraging them to turn to
God, who will change their weaknesses into strength. We need not to indulge our
resentfulness and anger towards others, but to be sources of healing to them.
This we will only ever be if we are mindful that we ourselves are sinners, that
we need to be enfolded in the liberating power of God’s Spirit. Only when we
are possessed of the freedom of God’s Spirit will we be truly free, free
especially from the self-indulgence of a mean human spirit.
This is one of the prime characteristics of the saints. They lived for
God, not themselves, and in the same freedom of the Spirit, and through it,
were able to love their neighbour as themselves, no matter what their neighbour’s
weaknesses and faults. May we, following the exhortation of Paul in the letter
to the Galatians today, find the source of our strength in God, that we too might
enjoy that same freedom in his Spirit, and love our neighbour as ourselves.
Fr Phillip.
No comments:
Post a Comment