“The truth shall set you free,” John Paul II’s most evangelical and dearest sentence, sounded again today in the words Benedict XVI spoke when he addressed 40,000 or so faithful who had gathered for the Angelus to remember all those who whilst suffering persecution remain free because “whomever belongs to the truth shall never be slave to any power.”
A day after the publication of his Letter to the Church of China with the Pope making no reference to it, those who heard him speak knew that it was about that country that he was talking when he mentioned those who suffer or have suffered for their faithfulness to Jesus.
Starting with the readings for Sunday mass, Benedict XVI before the Marian prayer dedicated his thoughts to man’s freedom, especially religious freedom.
Commenting Luke’s words “When the days for his being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem” (Lk 9:51), the Pope stressed how in “the expression ‘resolutely’ we can see Christ’s freedom.
He knows that death on the cross is waiting for him in Jerusalem but in obeying the Father’s will he offers himself out of love. And it is in this act of obedience that Jesus realises his own freedom as a conscious choice that was moved by love. Who is freer than him if not the Almighty? He has not lived his freedom as will or dominion but as service.
This way he ‘filled’ freedom with content, which would otherwise be just an ‘empty’ possibility to do or not do something. Like man’s own life, freedom makes sense from love. Who is freer?
Who keeps all the possibilities for fear of losing them as opposed to devoting himself ‘resolutely’ to serve others and so is full of life because of the love he has given and received?”
“Christian freedom is the opposite of arbitrariness,” the Pope said. “It is to follow Christ by giving oneself till the sacrifice on the Cross. It might seem a paradox, but the Lord experienced his utmost freedom on the Cross, as the summit of love.”
“Many other witnesses to the truth have shared this experience,” he added; “men and women who have shown that one can remain free even in a prison cell or under the threat of torture.
‘The truth shall set you free.’ Whoever belongs to the truth shall never be slave to any power, but shall always freely know how to serve his brothers.”
After the Angelus, Benedict XVI spoke about the “sad news of the barbaric murder of 11 regional lawmakers in Colombia’s Valle del Cauca department, who were in the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia for more than five years.
Whilst I raise prayers to intercede for them, I join in the deep sorrow felt by their families and the beloved Colombian nation, once more touched by fratricidal hatred.
I renew my heartfelt appeal that abductions be stopped and that all those who are currently victims of such inadmissible forms of violence be returned to the affection of their beloved.”
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