+ Our gospel passage today is a continuation from last week. Jesus is still resolutely making his way to Jerusalem. He is still determined to embrace the Cross of Calvary that will save so very many people, including you and me, from eternal separation from God and punishment. He loves us so very much!
While on the way there, today Jesus sends out into towns where he intends to visit on the trip, seventy-two pairs of helpers – whom he asked to courageously go among all kinds of people and announce that the Kingdom of God is at hand for them. These helpers (these disciples) were to travel very lightly. They were to keep as their main focus their job, the task that Jesus gave them to do. They were to test the waters of their visitations by announcing peace. When peace is offered to someone – it pretty much speaks for itself. If a peaceful man hears the offer, he will accept it gladly and offer it back to you. If not, there will be a lot of mumbling and even cursing and the offer of peace will be thrown right back into the face of the giver.
Jesus is actually calling us to do as these disciples: follow him to Jerusalem, where we will have the privilege of witnessing God's tremendous love for his people – by an unprecedented act of forgiveness, reconciliation and setting free – by means of the Cross. Later he would have us boast of the Cross of Christ as the sure hope of salvation for all in the world, but also he would have us carry our own crosses, boasting of them as well; for if we do not carry and boast about our own crosses – then we shall not share in the glory of the resurrection, the grace of forgiveness, the fullness of freedom, the fullness of peace forever!
God wants our hearts to rejoice because we feel so very much loved by him – even as a mother loves her children (I - Isaiah). We are his children – by baptism – and this is huge – this is our access point to so very many gifts, the greatest being faith and charity: belief in Jesus and the ability to love as he did with a love that emanates from the heart of God the Father himself.
Our greatest joy, our greatest freedom, then, is the freedom of the children of God! It is only as free children of God – operating on the supernatural level of faith and charity that we can even begin to understand how human life both individually and in community, the secular society, ought to be lived. In this we can see clearly how all natural law is based on and derivative of supernatural law. It cannot be otherwise. It is very difficult for a real Christian to live in the world – but no one ever said that it would be anything other than that. Jesus himself said it quite plainly: the world will hate you and persecute you if you believe in me and live by my brand of charity! In fact unless the world does look askance at us, perhaps we are not as Christian as we ought to be.
And on this fourth day of July, may we remember that the independence that this country was founded upon sprung from a desire for religious liberty – which was so very welcomed back then. Today it seems however to be so much the opposite case: exercising the legal right of religious freedom – especially by Church members - can get one labeled an enemy of progress and of the state.
It's time for freedom – true freedom – freedom of the children of God – to ring out throughout the land; whatever other kinds of freedom there are out there can only be valid if they participate in this fundamental God-given freedom – paid for by the Death of Christ Jesus on the Cross! It's time for the lamb to lie down with the wolf – in peace, peace that can only come from God alone!
Let the peace of Christ control your hearts; let the word of Christ dwell in you richly! Be transformed by the renewal of your minds!
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