Receiving Christ into our hearts begins the process of building a truly free human life
Posted on December 20th 2009 in Weekly messages
Every child dreads the day that they start sounding like their mother and father, or indeed start to look like them. The motives may be obscure, whether it is embarrassment at that age of life, or is perhaps the growing sense of inevitability in such matters. However, a more profound reflection on the relationship between personal freedom and the weight of biological and moral formation is possible. To start to sound like your parents, often means adopting their moral standpoints, long after having rebelled against their conformist ways. This phase of rejection does not last forever and, in later life, most people can feel nothing but gratitude for the way they were brought up, and the full extent of what was passed on in love now becomes the context for the exercise of freedom rather than its curtailment.
The same is true for religion. The way of faith allows for the exercise of freedom, starting from the ability to say yes. The Virgin Mary demonstrates a perfect example of the consequences of saying yes to the Archangel Gabriel. Her first thoughts were to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, in her hour of need, and to share the Good News of her own miraculous pregnancy. The Virgin Mary was caught up in the dynamism of the Incarnation, and she embarked on the long journey under the inspiration of her Son. Her tender ministry of accompaniment initially as a mother during those early years of childhood, and then throughout His public life and forwards into the life of the Church, became possible only through the freedom of saying Yes to the angel. The journey to Elizabeth’s house and the hardships that this must have entailed, mirror the later journeys of her Son, who in turn will bring the Good News in his person to those suffering and to those on the fringes of life.
The same anticipation of Jesus’ mission may be seen in the conduct of St Joseph, the just man who, diligent in respect to the Law of Moses, does not act without compassion. His decision to divorce Mary, having discovered that she is with child, fulfils the dictates of the Law of Deuteronomy, but his method of informality, thus most likely rejecting a public court case, shows his innate compassion to her plight. This sensitivity allows him to accept the angel’s message that Mary has conceived through the Holy Spirit. The taking of Mary and the unborn child into his house, legitimises the child, and fulfils the prophecies that the Saviour would be of the House of David. The profound care for the Law, combined with a sensitive disposition to the plight of humanity, will be seen in the mission of his adopted Son, who fulfils the Law’s demands while at the same time saying that not one iota of its precepts has been cancelled.
Just as the realisation that one’s moral and cultural formation has been achieved through one’s parents rather than in spite of them, so in matters of faith, to receive Christ into our hearts, is the beginning of the ability to build a truly free human life.