Advent Parish Renewal 2008
1 December 2008

Father speaks about the liberating power of the laws of God. Why are they
liberating when we often see God’s commandments as rules imposed upon us?
These rules are often seen as a way of enslaving one’s freedom and free
will. People in general dislike rules. People want to be free to do what
they want according to the dictates of their human desires. On this issue,
Father shared about his own rebellious attitude against rules imposed on
him in the past, particularly from his own father. Precisely because of
that, Father grew up with strong tendencies to want to break the rules.

In Exodus 20, in delivering the Ten Commandments, God said “I, the Lord,
am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of
slavery”. Here, God presented Himself as One who frees man from slavery.
So the commandments are meant for freedom and liberation, not slavery.
This should be the whole premise of the commandments and that should be
the way to look at them. On the contrary, freedom as men see it means to
follow one’s own human desires. But sins dwell in human desires as
explained by St Paul in Romans 7: “…the law of sins that dwells in my
members (my flesh)”. Therefore, following the flesh is in reality
enslavement to the desires of the flesh. So God gave us the commandments
and along with His Spirit to lead us to the right path towards freedom in
the spirit. Again, St Paul said in Romans 7 that “.. the law is
spiritual, but I am carnal, sold into slavery to sin”. A good illustration
is the case of a traffic system. Without a functional traffic rules and
regulations, traffic does not move because everybody would just do
whatever they want to do.

Father also speaks about the liberating power of knowledge and wisdom.
Knowledge of God is power. Knowledge of God leads to wisdom, wisdom leads
to virtues, virtues to holiness and holiness to eternal life. So the
foundation of holiness is knowledge which is a gift from the Holy Spirit.
A person who is gifted with knowledge of truth about God and His ways and
understand them can act according to the truth because he/she knows the
secret of spiritual life and the essence of life. The story of a young
rich man who was urged by Jesus to give up his wealth and then follow
Jesus did not have the knowledge and wisdom to see the reality of Jesus’
invitation. He still think that his worldly wealth is more valuable than
following Jesus and sharing his life with Jesus.

Interestingly, Father said that knowledge and wisdom are given to man
often directly by God. This reminds me of scripture saying “they are
taught of God”. Also, in Hosea 2:16 it says “So I will allure her, I will
lead her into the desert and speak to her heart”. Also in Isaiah 2:3
“Come let us climb the Lord’s mountain to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may instruct us in his ways”. So God speaks directly to the soul
of Man. Therefore, man has to put himself to listening, pondering and
reflecting on what the Lord is saying. According to Father, Catholics are
so used to asking for solutions or prescriptions to their problems, when
in fact we are supposed to ponder and meditate of God’s word to be able to
understand what the Lord’s instructions are for us.

Father also reminded us of the inherent goodness in man and inherent will
to do good. He said “man is a creature whose will is greater than his
ability and whose ability is greater than his duty. This is explained
again by St Paul in Romans 7 when he said “…the willing is ready at
hand, but doing the good is not”. We of course can easily relate to this
enduring truth that often we have strong will to do what it right and
good, but do not have the power to act on them.

Father shared about the Christian message as not only informative, but
precisely “performative”. It means that the message is meant to perform
God’s actions in us and that we as listeners need to act on the words of
God.