Readings for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Isaiah 55:10-11 | Romans 8:18-23 | Matthew 13:1-23
On Romans 8: 18-23
We continue our reflections on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans with a truly amazing passage, Romans 8:18-23, in which St. Paul describes the mystical freedom of life in God. Thus, we also continue our exploration of St. Paul’s understanding of freedom. Here, in this passage, we have an amazing term: “the glorious freedom of the children of God.” This is St. Paul’s mature understanding of freedom, and it contrasts greatly with the American understanding of freedom.
St. Paul understands and experiences freedom in a glorious manner. He connects this freedom to being a child of God. Now, this is a metaphor we hear a lot in Scripture. What does it mean to be a child of God? Immediately prior to today’s passage from Romans, namely Romans 8:18-23, St. Paul describes in Romans 8:14-17 what it means to be a child of God: “For those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’ The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:14-17). The human person relates to Abba (the Father) through the Holy Spirit by being in Jesus Christ. In other words, right here and right now, we share in God’s triune life. We are one with the Holy Trinity! This is due to the gratuity of God: lavishly, God grants us a total sharing in the life of the Trinity.
What St. Paul means by freedom is not what the United States of America typically means by freedom. America is mistaken; the freedom we eagerly desire is simply an unleashing of the ego’s fanatical desires. Positively, freedom here has to do with autonomy. The individual has no on her or his behaviors and pursuits except those of the law. But in practice it means loosening all restraints on the ego’s neurotic and compulsive behaviors and desires. Indeed, some in our country do not like even the restraints of law. They want no restraints and this means no restraints on one’s ego desires: greed, lust, gluttony, pride are not restrained but let loose. In practice, American freedom allows the rich and powerful to oppress the weak and poor.
The glorious freedom of the children of God begins with a no to the ego and its compulsive desires. Then, it grows through alignment of one’s life with one’s deepest reality, which is oneness with the Triune Love of God. The glorious freedom is not freedom to do what we want but the freedom to be who we really are: the children of God. Glorious freedom: free to be, simply to be, free from attachments, free from what others think and from tying happiness to circumstances or objects or people, and the very freedom of God.
The glorious freedom of God’s children is, more deeply, the freedom to be God. It is the very liberty of the Godhead: the freedom of God being God (recall that is what the phrase “God’s own righteousness” in Romans 1: 17 means). We are not prevented from knowing, enjoying, and living the divine love but fully empowered to do so. It is the freedom to be divine and that means the death of the self: dying with Christ and rising with Christ into oneness with the free and gratuitous love of the Triune God.
Further, St. Paul does not limit this freedom to humanity. All of creation longs for the revelation of this glorious freedom: “For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God… and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:19, 21). All creation longs for the revelation of this divine freedom for it is simultaneously the release of creation from “slavery to corruption.” Decay and death disappear in the divine freedom, the divine gratuitousness and eternity.
Scripture scholar Brendan Byrne comments, “Paul is drawing here on a biblical and postbiblical Jewish tradition that saw the nonhuman created world as intimately bound up with the fate of human beings. ‘Creation’ (ktisis) progresses when the human race progresses; it suffers a fall when human beings fall. Both share, in brief, a ‘common fate.’ The tradition goes back ultimately to
the biblical creation story where human beings, bearing the image of God, are given dominion over the earth (Gen 1:26–28; also Ps 8:5–8). A more immediate background to the present text is Genesis 3:17–19 where the earth is cursed because of Adam’s sin and, as a result, yields its fruits only grudgingly, requiring human toil and sweat. Correspondingly, on the same ‘common fate’ principle but in a reverse direction, there is the sense that a coming salvation of human beings (usually Israel) will redound positively upon creation as well. Creation will both share in and testify to the final restoration, encompassing a renewal that is cosmic in scale.” Everything in this universe is connected in love; everything connects through the Love that is the Trinity. When each of us realizes this glorious freedom – by prayer, faith, determination, and a life of love – we contribute to God’s salvation of the whole cosmos.