psalm 176 - freedom - 28th week tuesday 2016

Today we direct our attention to psalm 119, our responsorial psalm.  Again this is a continuation of what we called the longest psalm with 176 verses – 22 stanzas in all, each stanza with 8 verses.  The subject of this long psalm is love for God’s word. The psalmist may have used words like word of truth, ordinances, precepts, law, commands, statutes, but these refer only to one thing, God’s word in the bible.  “Take not the word of truth from my mouth, for in your ordinances is my hope.  And I will keep your law continually, And I will walk at liberty, because I seek your precepts.”

Often times we look at laws as a burden we are forced to carry.  We often see laws as limitations to our freedom.  I must do this even if I don’t like it because it is the law.  I cannot do what I want because I am constrained by laws.  But this is not how the psalm looks at God’s law – he sees it as a delight and a joy and when one seeks to obey God’s laws it is liberating, one is not shackled by limitations or constraints but becomes in fact free.

How is this?

Pope St. John Paul II said, “True Freedom is liberation not from external ‘constraint’ that calls me to good, but from the internal constraint that hinders my choice of the good.”  In other words, we can only be truly free when we take away those things in our hearts that hinder us from choosing the good.  And that is what the laws of God do – they take away that which hinders me from choosing the good that I should do.

What is it in me that hinders me from doing the good?  Selfishness is one.  Selfishness makes me think only of myself.  Indi na ako makapanumdom, indi na ako  makakita sang ikaayo sang iban, ang akon lang ikaayo ang ipasulabi.  This attitude enslaves us and it can never empower us to choose the good.  Indi ako makapili sing maayo bangud sang akon kadalok.  Ukon lantawa kon indi ka kapatawad, may kontra ikaw?  Nagalikaw ka, nagasaylo ka alagyan, nagasaylo ka pulongkoan para lang makalikaw.  You are no longer free.  Why?  Because you cannot follow the law of forgiveness.

And so when the law of the Lord says, “there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends,” we are freed from the enslavement of thinking and caring only for ourselves and acquire that freedom to choose to sacrifice, to choose even to suffer for the sake of the other.

God’s laws empower us to choose the good.  It gives us more freedom – the freedom to be generous despite the pull of selfishness, the freedom to forgive even if it is difficult and humiliating, the freedom to love even those who cannot and does not love us in return.  This is why the psalmist calls the laws of God a force of freedom, when he says “I will walk at liberty, because I seek your precepts.”

Jesus in the gospel invites the Pharisees to live in freedom and not be enslaved by traditions of ritual cleanliness.  Their traditions gave them an excuse to be compassionate.  So Jesus told them give alms, care for the poor among you, and behold everything will be clean for you. In Jesus you can become empowered to choose the good.