6th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023

We meet again for the Eucharist in church. We come to God with joys and sorrows, with successes and defeats. We come to adore God, to say sorry for our failings, and with our requests.The Lord wants to respond to our most secret desires and thoughts – he responds in accordance to our need.He wants to enter our everyday life and give it   a divine and definitive character and example. Therefore, it is He Himself who wants to speak to us and fill the emptiness of our hearts. He also wishes to teach us how to be truly free.                                          It is said that St John Paul II’s favourite passage from the Gospels were the words of the Lord Jesus:  “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” In his first encyclical Redemptor hominis which in Latin means Redeemer of man, he explained what it meant to strive for truth, but also for freedom. The two values intertwine and condition each other. Today, when we hear Christ’s words referring to the Decalogue and its full understanding, we are confronted with the question of freedom and truth. The question is whether we understand following the path of the commandments as the path to freedom and truth, whether we recognise that they are the ones that give us full freedom. Many will probably think: what freedom…. After all, the commandments command something and forbid something else. Yes, they are the path to freedom, for it is in them, after all, that the truth about God, about man and his relationship to the Creator, to other people and to himself is hidden. Only this setting of the commandments can be helpful in discovering in them the freedom that God wants to bestow on us.   But let us remember that freedom is, as one philosopher once wrote , an unfortunate gift.   This sentence is not about running away from it, about being afraid of freedom. Perhaps it is more about making good use of freedom, not exalting it above everything else. It’s more about remembering that it comes with the possibility of a bad choice.     So what are we to do? Christ reminds us of the commandments, but the Word of God also speaks of freedom in choosing the path of life. The answer is brought by a psalm refrain and    a passage from St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians.

This attitude that can help us, me and you, make the right choices in freedom pursuing the truth is…. seeking God. Gazing and listening to His voice, being in communion with Him.         Then we can be more confident in our decisions, we can go through life with confidence and in freedom. Such an attitude will also help us to see that it is living with and for God that opens us up to the true wisdom of which the ” no eye has seen and no ear has heard, things beyond the mind…” -which may be ours by the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be honour, and glory, and praise, and power, now and forever. Amen