Mar 7 Sat
Is it good to use one’s freedom?
If God didn’t want Adam and Eve to eat of the tree, why did He put it there? Since He is all Wisdom, He must have had a reason to place that forbidden tree in the garden.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil reminds us of the limits that man, as a creature, must freely accept and respect with trust.
Now, to “freely accept and respect with trust” is something the Devil cannot do. He wants all created gifts to have no limits, without a Creator or Giver. He refuses to recognize or respect his limits as a creature. I will not serve; I will not observe limits.
Thus, the Devil always divides us from others and us from ourselves.
Misery loves company, so the Devil wants to reproduce his mindset in others. His first victims were Adam and Eve. He asked, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?”
He’s not asking to get an answer. He’s suggesting that limits are absurd and anyone who sets them is an enemy.
Adam and Eve took the bait. They reached beyond their boundaries, and in so doing, they fell.
The Devil had the same game plan when he approached Jesus in the desert. If the Devil cannot understand the blessing of being a creature of God, then the limitations of the Incarnation were absolutely incomprehensible to him.
Yet we believe that the Incarnation is not a fiction or make-believe. God really did confine and limit Himself to our human nature – to be born of a woman, to experience exhaustion, hunger, thirst, and sorrow, and even to be tempted.
The Devil cannot grasp the eternal Son’s joyful dependence on God the Father. Nor can he understand the Son’s joyful embrace of our created human nature. For Satan, divine power means doing whatever you want – not serving anybody. It certainly doesn’t mean setting limits for yourself through humility.
We live in a culture that rejects limits and embraces the demonic concept of freedom. Some think that to be free, we must break all limitations, even those of our human nature. For these individuals, freedom requires that a husband and wife be released from their union, a mother be liberated from her unborn child, a boy become a girl, and our souls be uploaded into machines.
In the desert, the Incarnate Lord shows us the true path. By humbling – limiting – Himself in our human nature and trusting in His Father, He overcomes the Devil’s temptations. He has done so for us to enjoy the “glorious freedom of the children of God.”
Why, my Lord, have you granted us freedom, this privilege which we can use to follow in your footsteps but also to offend you?
We must understand that when we use freedom properly, it directs us towards the good; and when misused, it turns us away from the Love of loves.
Personal freedom should lead us to ask: 'What do you want from me, Lord, so that I may freely do it?'
With some excerpts from Fr. Paul D. Scalia