12 October 2020
Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
“For freedom Christ set us free; so, stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.”
Christ came to deliver us, and once delivered, to live in a way that we do not return to slavery. This freedom passes through two stages: the first is the stage of Jonah and the second is the stage of Solomon. Paul’s image of being enslaved is that of being in the yoke of slavery. A yoke is a device that links us to something, and in this case, we are yoked to the slavery to sin. Through repentance, through the way of Jonah, we begin to become unbuckled from this yoke of sin. Our will’s desire for sin begins to be weakened and broken. We begin to stop pulling in our wake paths of destruction, disunity, and division. Through baptism first, and then – as Augustine reminds us – through continual contrition for sin, we slowly put down this yoke and begin to stand in a new freedom of Christ. However, freedom is not an end in and of itself. We and our will may have begun to be freed from the old yoke, but we must also learn to live well with this freedom, we must learn to choose well. In a sense we need a new wisdom to teach us how to live with this newly discovered gift of freedom. This brings us to the way of Solomon.
Solomon was known for being the wisest man in the ancient world. Christ is holding himself up as something greater, as a greater wisdom for us that can be a guide to the new kind of freedom that he offers us. As Christians, we are not called to freedom alone, but to become like Christ, to live under his new yoke which is paradoxically light and easy. Christ’s yoke is a teacher to us and a guide to us in how to use our freedom well. Christ came to draw us out of sin and also to redeem our wills in teaching us how to thrive in our new freedom. Our lives move between the call of Jonah and the call of Solomon as we grow in contrition, in wisdom, and in love for and with Christ. Let us pray today to hear where the Lord is calling us to respond to his call to repent or to grow in wisdom.