The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
Last semester, as part of the pre-theology program, a seminarian brother and I took a class taught by a wonderful Dominican sister. She was terribly smart, funny, and full of Christian joy. It was a freshman level course, full of 18-year-olds that clearly did not want to be there and did not particularly care what was being taught. However one day, sister started the class by talking about freedom. She made the following claim: The couple that gets married and has children is in fact freer than the couple who lives together, puts off getting married and having children so that they can travel the world and post it on Instagram. Undoubtedly, the students were now paying attention.
What on earth was she talking about? Today, children are seen as a burden. Young people are told, “You should wait until you have enough money. Wait until you have your ‘feet under you’, until you are in a good place in your career. Travel the world, live your life.” as if this was true freedom.
As any good Dominican would, she explained her confusing claim: It’s about the capacity for love. The married couple can love in a much higher way: They are able give a total self-gift. By stepping outside of themselves for the sake of the other, they are free. They no longer live for themselves, but for someone else. They deny themselves, so that they may will the good of another. In so doing, they are truly fulfilled and experience the joy of parenthood and married life, as God created and intended.
The other couple in the example, by the very nature of their relationship, cannot experience love in the same way. Even though they are in a relationship, they are entirely concerned with themselves, and not the other. They are overly concerned for what they want in life, what they think will make them happy. This attachment restricts them, not allowing them to truly love. And thus, they are not free.
The prophet Isaiah tells us today that we are anointed and called to “proclaim liberty to captives.” In a world enslaved to so many things that are not of God, we have the incredible opportunity to share the good news of God’s love. We can be like St. John the Baptist in today’s Gospel, “the voice crying out in the wilderness,” that Jesus Christ is Lord. That giving all to him, and living in relationship with him, is true freedom. However, we must first have this freedom ourselves, for no one can give what they do not have.
We should ask ourselves, “Where in my life am I not free to love as Christ loves? What are the things, or people, that I am attached to? Where do I need to make more room for ‘the way of the Lord’?” These questions are always best asked and answered in silent prayer with Jesus. Even if that is 10-15 minutes a day, it is in such moments that the most important relationship of our lives is formed and fostered. We come to know who we truly are, our true identity, so that we may then give of ourselves in love. In so doing, we will be like Mary, totally free, and be able to truthfully exclaim as she does in the responsorial today, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God, my savior.”
Keenan Annicchiarico is in his third year of seminary formation at St. Mary's Major Seminary in Houston, Texas. He had his reversion to the faith five years ago through praying the Rosary everyday, and hopes to share this devotion with as many people as he can.