Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St.
The drug and alcohol rehab vets I worked with years ago used to confront the dissembling obstinance of new members to the group with this pithy saying: “The truth will set you free…and sometimes really tick you off!” They knew first hand the empty promises, the false joys of slavery to sin. Not that their addictions per se were sinful, of course, but the lives they were required to construct around their dependencies were often ramshackled shanties shot full of holes, rotted and crumbling foundations, painted over obscenities, and there was always the lurking threat of collapse, the desperate gamble against discovery and disaster. More than anything their substance-slavery shackled them to lying, to illusion, and dumped them all alone in a world of recycling hopelessness and despair. When they would tell the newbie in the group that the truth would set him free, they meant that his life had to change radically. When they told him that the truth would tick him off, they meant that it would REALLY tick him off. Our chosen illusions comfort us even as they eat us alive. How often do we prefer to be eaten alive than awakened from fantasy?
Notice carefully who Jesus is teaching. Not the crowds. Not the scribes and Pharisees. But “those Jews who believed in him.” He’s teaching those who already confess his lordship, those who already know who he is and bow to his word. Beyond this initial profession of faith, Jesus is telling them that there is a state of true discipleship, an enduring friendship of obedience and love that rests on a simple progression of knowledge: remain in my word—know the truth—the truth will set you free. He says, “Everyone who commits a sin is a slave to sin.” Each act of disobedience then, each willful failure to hear and heed the Word is a link in a chain around your neck. This is not a punishment for a crime so much as it is a consequence of pride. We choose to depend on our own will rather than the will of the Father for us. Sin is surrender: to our passions, our logic, our prejudices and preferences; giving in to our delusions of perfection and the need for control.
You do not own your life. You are a slave to Christ!
So, when Jesus tells the believing Jews to remain in his word, to know the truth, and that the truth will set them free, what exactly is he teaching them? Our Holy Father answers in Sacramentum caritatis: “In the sacrament of the altar[…]the Lord truly becomes food for us, to satisfy our hunger for truth and freedom. Since only the truth can make us free, Christ becomes for us the food of truth[…]Jesus Christ is the Truth in person, drawing the world to himself” (SC 2). To remain in Christ’s word then is to meet him daily. To know his truth is to know him intimately as Lord. To be set free by truth is to be enslaved to Christ…daily. Our Holy Father goes on to teach: “Jesus is the lodestar of human freedom: without him, freedom loses its focus, for without the knowledge of truth, freedom becomes debased, alienated and reduced to empty caprice. With him, freedom finds itself” (SC 2). There is no freedom without truth. We cannot act freely as creatures without the frame and goal of truth. Without truth we merely act, creating illusion, building a powerful resistance to obedience, and preparing ourselves for the final scene of a terrible drama: slavery to our finite whims, our fixed choices. And hell.
Would you prefer being eaten alive by sin to being awakened from the fantasy that you can act freely without acting truthfully? Christ is our freedom. He is our truth. Remain in him and come with us to die with him in
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